The Concentrator: a Less is More Themed Submission

Introduction

This is my recap of the Go Godot Jam 4, which I submitted The Concentrator, a game about extracting essential oils from plants.  This was my first time using the Godot game engine, apart from some tutorials I laid out in the first devlog. 

Theme & Concept

This game jam was themed Less is More. I found this quite fulfilling. Since I was brand new to Godot, the theme would allow me to focus on a small element of game play and not have to put together a broader world. I decided to pick an element of a game I have been ruminating on - a collection & crafting RPG, based on folk medicine and traditional healing.  I'd like to create a game where you can explore traditional herbal remedies in a realistic but fictional setting. This is why all ingredients in the game are real world ingredients, too.

Ship early, ship often

Further embodying Less is More, I decided to focus on shipping multiple versions of this game, each in a working demo or prototype state. This allowed me to give myself a lot of freedom in posting a new version each time I implemented a small element of the game. It also let me experiment with the export function of Godot early on, meaning when I went to export my final version, it was second nature to me. Since I'm such a beginner, this demo is missing a lot of basics. This includes music, and sound effects. Had I been trying to complete the game before I shipped it for this Jam, I may never have made this upload. Since I had submitted my project early on, every iteration improved on it, so I could bypass the 'completion anxiety' I get about projects. 

The Concentrator, Version 4

I made 5 releases over the course of this jam (0 through 4, the submission). Version 0 was a basic Inventory UI, with no gameplay, and two to four items. Version 4 has a full game loop, a basic implementation of my idea, and player-customizable  recipes. I had a lot of fun creating the game, and am happy with the progress I made for the time I committed. 

I didn't have an opportunity to add sound, or a scaling UI. This is just a limitation of my own knowledge of Godot, and the time I had available to me for this jam. I also didn't have much chance to do anything with the recipe ingredient 'quantity'.

The recipes themselves are hatchet jobs, as I didn't have time to research traditional herbal remedies and had to rely on my pop culture knowledge. This is another element that needs a lot of research, especially when it comes to combining ingredients. There are a lot of good books about traditional medicine in Ireland that have just been released in the last few years, so I will start by reading those. I'd like to link these back into modern research too, so the game experience can be kept as a realistic learning experience.

The Recipe data structure, and the modifications additional ingredients make to those recipes, is already starting to become cumbersome with only twelve Recipes and fourteen Flavours throughout the game. This is another element I will be restructuring and refactoring early on. I am glad I decided to follow the quick ship and iterate approach, as I think I'd still be trying to design a good lookup system on paper, rather than go with the working imperfect solution and having a game shipped. I have some ideas on how to extend this to incorporate an arbitrary number of ingredients, so stay tuned.

Future

I intend to take this concept to the Improve my Game Jams going forwards, to fix up some of the above issues and keep iterating on the design.