What it was
Five of us made Post Haste over a weekend. You play a package that realises it isn't on the delivery truck, then rolls and jumps across the warehouse to reach it. There are planks to cross, puddles to avoid and a few objects that turn out to be friendly. We made three levels in Unity and put the WebGL build on itch. It's the most successful thing we've submitted to a jam, it ranked well and people came back to compete over the best times.
Build
- The physics controller lets the parcel roll and jump. Jumping carries its existing momentum, so the approach to an obstacle affects how you clear it.
- The three levels are small and densely filled with planks, puddles, shelving and conveyors.
- The camera stays at parcel height. Ordinary warehouse objects become quite large obstacles.
- It runs as a Unity WebGL build in the browser.
Key decisions
Level size
We kept each level small enough to fill properly over the weekend. Once the movement worked, we could spend the time making the rooms enjoyable to get through.
Web build
People judging a jam have a lot of games to try. A browser build meant they could open ours straight from the itch page.
Lesson learned
The jump got more interesting as we played it.the rest of it ↓fold it back up ↑
We had the box rolling and jumping within a few hours. Two inputs, no grabbing things or inventory to build, so we had the rest of the weekend to play it and make levels. The jump became more interesting as we did that. It adds to the force you've already built up, so timing it well carries speed and mistiming it can kill your run. We found that while playing the first version, then built around it.