Icebreaker
Battle for control of the pond in this frigid four player party game! Swing your hammer and smash the ice below your opponents, but be careful not to mess up the structural integrity of the ice and send yourself crashing into the depths.
I created this game over the course of a week along with my friends @Theren_Drythorn and @TheTwoFingeredGlove, as part of a game jam run by the WPI branch of the International Game Developers Association. The game jam was themed around minigames like in Mario Party, with each team creating a minigame to be combined into a larger party game.
Design and Gameplay
Icebreaker's gameplay is a cross between Minecraft Spleef and the children's game Don't Break the Ice. Players wield a comically large hammer and use it to break the ice tiles beneath their opponents. Tiles are considered supported if both tiles on either axis are stable, meaning that strategic plays can destroy large sections of the board at once. Players can also use their hammers to squish each other, temporarily stunning the squished player. After 30 seconds, a sudden death mode begins, in which ice starts breaking on its own, typically bringing the game to a close in under a minute.
Process
During the design of this game, my team members and I made an effort to manage the scope of the project within the limited time frame of the game jam. We designed the core mechanics of the game first, such as the player movement and ice breaking, before adding less important features, like the trees in the background and the dance that the winner does at the end. We also had a clear goal in mind of how we wanted the game to turn out, minimizing arguments between team members. The work was fairly evenly split, with each of us contributing a feature or two when we had time in between classes and homework.
Conclusion
This game was a lot of fun to create, and I learned a lot while making it. The game jam was unranked, but we had a chance to play each others' games at the end and everyone seemed to enjoy checking out Icebreaker. College has been busy so far but has also definitely stimulated my creativity, so I am hoping to have more projects like this soon.