Get Smol [Demo]

A janky proof of concept project I made for GMTK while learning to use Godot.

Get Smol by throwing out your inner demons (in the form of tetris blocks)! Launching blocks will make you proportionally smaller, while also allowing you to move around (sorta). But if you collide with blocks they'll rejoin you, so you'll have to avoid them or parry to deflect them away.

Controls:

Arrow keys to eject blocks in a direction. Hold keys for up to 1 second to charge up a larger block. 

Press Space to 'parry', making you immune to block collisions for half a second, with a 1 second cooldown.

Thoughts:

The physics are very janky so this game doesn't really provide an interesting challenge. It can still look cool to get very small, either through intentional play using the charge and parry or just spamming arrow keys. I also find it very entertaining when you start getting bigger and just kinda slurp up all the chaos.

Inspiration:

Following with the GMTK theme of size, the idea of this was to convey a sense of scale similar to the cell stage in the game Spore. As you get smaller and zoom in, the original blocks you cast off would get bigger and also slower, shifting from minor inconveniences to looming threats or a new dynamic arena. 

Two other ideals I was aiming for were to have a game with a continuous flow between success and failure and one where good play is rewarded with a greater challenge and complexity. Rather than having a discreet fail state which would pull you out of the flow of gameplay, the idea was that good play would dynamically ramp up the difficulty and mistakes would similarly lower it. This should make mistakes hurt less, while also making your victory or high score come at the same moment as your best gameplay. While it's not easy to see in this version, I do think that this system of getting smaller would be a good vehicle for that. Smaller creatures in our world generally move faster (bc. of the square-cube law), so it's natural for things to get more difficult as you get smaller in a game. It also provides additional complexity as the larger blocks you leave behind as you shrink could create a shifting arena. It's really the opposite of games like Katamari Damacy or the like 3 different shark games I've played where you eat to get bigger.

Credit:

Player art and the octagon boundary taken from flaticon.com.