Making Firelight Swamp's game jam demo

Me and TardiiArt have talked about doing a game jam together for ages. We both consume a lot of horror media so I suggested Mini Jam 182. As frog lovers, we didn't see the issue with the "must include a frog" limitation—my only thought was "again?"

I cooked up a bunch of ideas before we had our first voice call:

However, it was Tardii who suggested playing as a moth. They figured that most people would choose to make a playable frog. When I heard this idea, I imagined a literal moth, so the anthropomorphic look was also entirely Tardii's idea.

Making it a platformer seemed a no-brainer, although we did entertain the idea of a pseudo-3D game like Space Harrier or Panorama Cotton. Knowing that, we quickly got to work on concept art. My contribution being the top-right:

Tardii was pretty adamant about the xenomorph-like tongue. It's better not to ask why.

I started work on the game engine and immediately decided to scrap standard jumping in favour of a flapping movement like Joust or Balloon Fight. In fact, Balloon Kid was the inspiration for the level design... even though most of the planned ideas didn't make the cut.

Speaking of unused ideas, see below. You were supposed to be able to pick up fireflies and "holster" them. The idea was to use them to slow the frog down.

Working with an artist really eased the burden of development. We only had three days—and we were both busy on Saturday!—but Tardii managed to create a fascinating parallax world with simple brush strokes. Have a look at their environment ideas:

So is it an Estonian wetland or a Lousiana bayou? Who knows. I definitely looked at Disney's "Princess and the Frog" for inspiration though.

The stuff which took the most work was all behind-the-curtain, so I don't have many visuals to share. The final demo, submitted before the jam's deadline, doesn't resemble what I imagined at all—but that's the fun of a restrictive game jam, right?

I wanted more animations, slopes, a more reactive frog, better collision detection for the fireflies, and more than just a singular kind of breakable tile... but that's all we had time for.

We look forward to seeing everyone else's projects!