fly me to the moon

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I don't know how to start this.

I am so tired because I just came back from vacation a day ago.

But it's the esa x fgj jam, THE space jam, the jam that was literally made for me. I love space. So I really wanted to join.

But also I'm tired.

And so here we are.

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The world and other black holes

I like space. It's kind of in the name.

I don't really know a lot about it, but I think that's what makes it so fascinating. We just don't know.

I really wish I could have done more for the jam but I am tired and I don't want to chase.

Saw the parade of planets in January, that was pretty cool.

One day.

And I thought, when I look at space and particularly learning about astronomy and space engineering I just don't really understand it but I wish I did and so all I can do is observe it's beauty and enjoy it that way.

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A short note about the game

I had this idea a while back actually, when the jam was first announced.

Back then, I even did some quick concepting in the middle of the night to get my ideas down.

I actually added quite a few more things onto here as time went on, but the idea stayed the same.

I really wished I could have made a game that's scientifically accurate and interesting, but I am a narrative designer who infers and projects into everything so here we are.

I did actually try a little bit though.

One of the few things I own is this sick huge space picture book that I ended up taking as source inspiration for most of the designs and figuring out how things actually work.

Another place that really helped, especially with the whole cockpit and what not that I kind of had in mind as the main setting, was this cool 3D model of the Apollo command, which explained a lot of the little buttons and that was pretty cool. I did end up simplifying it quite a lot, which I suppose goes against scientific accuracy, but I am tired.

My favourite page is the one about the moon maria and craters because they have great names.

The idea was to have a point-and-click timed jigsaw style puzzle of how to handle an emergency situation (or how not to). It was basically meant as an anxiety sim. And with little to no labeling and knowing nothing of spacecraft control would only make it worse.

But that was kind of the point.

I wanted it to be kind of a seemingly random combination of tasks, pressuring you ( the pilot? ) with time running out before your ship explodes ( or does it? ), but still having a possible solution if you can figure out the puzzle.

( I guess in the end, we did end on something meaningless accidentally anyway. )

It was meant to sort of show how easy it would be to mess things up, the interconnections (that I'm sure exist?) of the systems and what it takes to stay calm.

The idea was that the game is only hard if you panic.

In the end, since I've literally come back from vacation on the day the jam started, and then had construct be annoying in typical construct fashion ( so far I've managed to crash it 4 times? That's a new record. ) on Saturday, I really only worked on the game for three hours on Sunday. I'm tired and it's enough.

Maybe I'll actually make it some other time.

I should really really learn a better engine, I know.

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But the game is for that one friend who doesn't know if they're doing the right thing and I agree I don't know either but a lesson I know is that overthinking sometimes just makes things worse.

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