Thread by @stas

Last weekend I made a tiny action game about being an alarm clock on wheels.

Presenting: You Are The Snooze Button.

#LDJAM #gamedev #webgl

You Are The Snooze Button can be played in all modern browsers, both desktop and mobile. It only takes a few minutes to finish it.

Play it here: piesku.itch.io/snooze

You Are The Snooze Button is a submission to Ludum Dare 50; the theme was 'Delay the inevitable.' I entered the Compo category, which meant the game had to be made solo, in less than 48 hours, and with original assets only.

ldjam.com/events/ludum-d…

I used Goodluck, a custom WebGL2 engine I’ve created with @michalbe. Goodluck is fast and has a tiny code size footprint; it was originally developed for @js13kGames.

gdlck.com

When the theme ('delay the inevitable') was announced on Saturday morning, rather grim and fatalistic ideas were coming to my head and I wasn’t sure I’d participate at all. I didn’t stress too much about it, either.

After a few hours I started having brighter associations: can I make a game about delaying the end of something nice and pleasant? A holiday, a nap, a childhood?

The nap idea made me think of Clocky — an actual alarm clock I used to own! Clocky had two wheels and it ran away from you as soon as it started buzzing.

clocky.com

I decided to add a little twist, too. Rather than playing as the drowsy human trying to switch the alarm off, how about reversing the roles — and playing as the alarm clock? That’s how the idea behind You Are The Snooze Button came about.

At first I imagined the game as an endless runner in which you avoid the human’s hands and legs, while jumping over obstacles on the floor. I even wrote some code but I wasn’t feeling very motivated and I decided to take a break and see how I feel about this idea Sunday morning.

To be fair, I had a rough night without much sleep, but I did wake up with a complete idea for a game and the visual style which I found appealing: a combination of pastel and clay, perhaps? I added real-time shadows and I felt I had something to work with.

I only had Sunday left to work on this, so I reduced the scope and decided to ship a single static level in the game. This way I could ensure it looked good and I could balance the game much easier than if using procedural endless level generation.

I built the room in Blender using simple shapes like cubes and cylinders, and I did the same for the alarm clock and the hand, adding in the Bevel modifier to make them a bit more interesting.

My relaxed attitude from Saturday turned into quite an intense Sunday, and despite best efforts I wasn't able to submit the finished game earlier than the 3 AM deadline on the night from Sunday to Monday. I'm not proud of the frantic and rushed finish.

But I am happy with the end result! Except one thing: the game features no sound at all. I could make an excuse about running out of time, but the truth is that I tried and I failed.

I recorded myself snoring and doing other sleepy noises, but I had no idea how to make it all work and sound well. I also didn’t know what kind of music would fit the game. It’s like I can’t really imagine sound, and nothing comes to mind when I try.

I don’t know if this is something I can learn to do in the future, but I’m certainly going to try. I know You Are The Snooze Button would be a much better game if it had music and sound effects. I’ll do my best for my next game!