There are a ton of game jams happening online at any point during the year. Many of these jams follow a theme and a timeframe, giving developers the challenge of creating a game within a specific jam’s restrictions. I am able to record loads of these games for each and almost every game jam. As I record them all, I pick out games that stand out to me and games I love from each individual jam. This article contains the games I love from the 7 Day Broughlike.
7 Day Broughlike was a game jam that challenged developers to create a ‘Broughlike’ or a game that is in the style of Michael Brough, a developer who has a very specific style to their games. I’ve played through each of the submitted creations in my compilation video series and below are a few of my favorites, in a random order.
Crab by Kirk Winner
Ever wonder what crabs do on the empty beach? In Crab, you play as a little crab (duh) who is just trying to build a sand castle. Unfortunately a seagull has stolen your flag, which is very much needed to complete your odd sand castle. The sand that you are standing on is in a grid, made up of blocks that you can pick up and move. You must place these around to make a path upwards to the seagull, then to where you need to place the flag.
As you move around, the tide will rise, bringing you more underwater. You’ll need to move quickly and in the least amount of steps possible to stay above water. There is a lot of challenge in Crab, feeling almost unfair at times, especially when the next level of sand that spawns in is not very helpful, but there is a great feeling of ‘one more go’ that kept me playing. The graphics are cute and a day at the beach is exactly what I wanted, so Crab filled that need.
Dungpler by Samson Starmer-Lee & Ashleigh Starmer-Lee
Dung beetles always peak my interest in games. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but they always seem like cute bugs just rolling around a ball that happens to be made of poo. In Dungpler, you’re a dung beetle looking to roll some poo up into a ball and place it into your hole. This is a turn-based game where each move you make moves a bird closer to you and if they make it to the end of their flight then they will eat you up.
This bird is not the only danger in Dungpler — there are other bugs that start to spawn in, hoping to squish you! Dung isn’t always rolled into a ball, so you will need to push piles of poo into a ball, before rolling them forward or pulling them backwards around the screen. You can combine poo to make a bigger ball and clear the spaces on the screen as well as push the balls into other bugs to squish them. Your goal is to just survive as long as possible, pushing more and more balls into your hole as you survive.
Dungpler is a simple game that gets quite hectic as the screen fills up, keeping you on your toes.
Daedalike by tomtl & Chris King
Daedalike sees you building the entire level on your own, by placing tiles that appear on the side of the screen. An empty, grid-based level is presented in front of you, with your character at a starting point and a pulsing green circle at the ending point. You’ll need to make it to that circle, but with nothing to walk upon, it’s going to be impossible.
Luckily, you are able to place tiles anywhere on the screen, building a path for you to take to the exit. This path can be direct or can happen after you have filled the grid, it’s completely up to you. The tile you are given is one you have to place and may have walls or monsters on them. You cannot see the strength of the monster until the tile is placed, so placing monsters in areas where walls block them off from you is sometimes ideal. Often though, you’ll need that tile and want to place it down to fight off the monster.
These monsters do move each time you place a tile, walking closer to you if there is a path. Using the walls and placing tiles strategically will be your friend. At the moment, Daedalike is a very simple game, but the core concept is brilliant and I really hope to see it expanded upon in the future.
The 7 Day Broughlike had a very interesting theme to it’s jam and I look forward to seeing if this game jam becomes yearly!
Interested in reading about more game jam highlights? Why not check out our archive?
