"Particle of Life" Devlog

"Particle of Life" was a theme for Alternative Engine Jam. The idea was to take an "unpopular" game engine and try to build a game with it.

I chose Ct.js as an engine. Ct.js is a free and open-source 2D game "editor". It is beginner friendly - that was important for me as a beginner.

At first look, it felt that there were very few tools, but it is very modular. There is almost a module for everything that you need to create a small game - especially for a Game Jam. Also at the first look their documentation, which is also a built-in editor, seemed to me very "thin". But with every added module I got exact documentation about it added. There are very few tutorials on how to use Ct.js. But official tutorials "Space shooter game", "Platformer example" and "Jetty cat" - "Flappy bird"-like game, covered pretty much everything that I should know for my game.

My game idea was a small adventure-style game with zombies and ... of course -Particle of Light.

All the art for this game was taken from Kenney. Thanks, Kenney!

The task in the game is to get through the zombies and find a "Particle of light" that is hidden in one of the caves. Then the next task to finish the game is to cure all the zombies. I wanted to avoid any killings there so for the player to deal with attacking zombies there is a mechanic to stun them by throwing stones.

* Biggest problems for me with the engine were custom events and adding child objects, I made objects to follow other objects by code not by nesting them in a parent object. Also sometimes by playing the finished game the speed of characters' movement is faster than it should be despite using delta time.

* But I must say I kinda enjoyed making a game with Ct.js because it is a light engine without tons of buttons and menus, but still everything you need to make a small functional game.

Thanks to Alternative Engine Jam organizers who let me submit the game after the deadline.