Long story short, after getting laid off for the second time within ten months, I wasn’t in the mood for anything but updating my website and searching for jobs. One day, my fiance asked me to make our first game by participating in a game jam called Ludum Dare. I thought it could be a good way to take my mind off things. “Cool! I’m in.”
Day 0
Before the jam, we wanted to look for some popular tools out there for game design. Right from the beginning, my partner already expressed a big interest in pixel art. “It reminds me of the Impressionism,” he said. Eventually, we decided to go with Aseprite for making pixel art, and Godot game engine for top-down isometric.
This is the first animation I made to study the jumping cycle:
Alien frog — a study of jump-in-place cycle
During our brainstorming session (I mean lunch), we came up with an idea to recreate an old game and spice it up a little bit. My partner showed me a favorite childhood board game of his called Parcheesi. “I know this one,” I said excitedly. In Vietnam, we call this “Horse Race Chess” aka. C??? Cá Ng???a. Rolling up my sleeves, I started sketching some character design ideas in Illustrator.