[DevLog] I Am; - 0.9

in #hive-1769813 years ago

I Am; is my entry to NokiaJam4. It's a short interactive experience about self-love.


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Play:

"I Am;" is a short experience to help you think positively or at least increase awareness of your bad thoughts. This interactive experience was inspired by the mobile App "I Am; Daily Affirmations."

Background:

I Am; isn't a game & more like a reminder of positive thoughts. The idea is to have short positivity messages that you can navigate or allow to auto-scroll.

The idea is inspired by "I Am; Daily Affirmations" (Android/iOS.) My best online friend recommended that app to me in my time of need & it was effective. If my version helped you like I was helped, I'll be proud!

Since this an entry to Nokia Jam, I tried to make the visual design aesthetics are inspired by the old Nokia 3310 (the most popular mobile phone in my country when I was young.)

I didn't incorporate the theme UPGRADE in the entry, but I'll cheat think positive and say I did: "Upgrade your life!"

Controls:

  • Right: Right Arrow/D/Numpad6
  • Left: Left Arrow/A/Numpad4
  • Auto: Space/Down/Up/S/W/Numpad5

Features:

  • 1-Bit: Only the two nostalgic colors of the old Nokia phone.
  • Dozens of Positive Thoughts to go through.
  • No subscription plan: A common thing in Nokia3310's time. Can you believe it? This is considered a feature nowadays.

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Dev Log #1

This is the first finished project I make with Construct 3. Most of the games I have on my Itch.io & GameJolt pages are made with Construct 2. Migrating to the next version of the app wasn't very hard but since I don't have a subscription, I had to work with the limitations of the free version.

As of the time of writing, I spent between 10-15 hours on this project over 3 days. I did go over some trial and error. I had to re-learn some of Construct's workflow quirks. (I have to thank Scirra for their in-depth documentation.)

I spent 2 hours in the first day trying to create a sprite font. The bitmap fonts I had were all too big. Then I realized that nokiajam already provides better fonts for my usecase for free in their Jam Resources. They also offer sound resources that I might download in the future. In the end, I settled for the font "Ark" by somepx.

At first, I published the project as an unlisted prototype and gave the link to some participants in the Nokiajam challenge, that version had only the auto-mode & 15~ messages, with their feedback I added 15 other messages and added control mode which became the default.

I took inspiration for the positivity messages from the app mentioned, but I only took 5~ messages directly from it. I used my memory to come up with the other messages myself. At the time of this writing, there are 30 in "I Am;" I'm planning to have more by the next update.

Thanks for reading & See you in the next Devlog!