I began creating Melting Point on the evening of May 7th, 2021. Earlier that day, after having worked in game maker on some small prototypes, for a few months, I decided to jump headfirst into game development and create my first complete game for a beginner game jam.

 The theme of this jam is, “Temperature is Key”. I went into the jam wanting to make a 2D platformer, so my first idea was to have a game where the player carried around an ice block with a key in it. You would have to melt the ice somehow to get the key out. This idea morphed into the idea that the ice itself was the key, and you had to get it to the door before it melted. I then thought, screw it, let’s just make the game character an ice block. I thought I could make a cute ice block character, and I think the design if came up with, while extremely simple, is pretty cute. I then came up with the general premise that the game is still based on. You would be trying to escape from an underground weather experiment facility after something went wrong, and it began to heat up. Since it typically gets cooler when you go underground, I decided to make the goal of the game to go deeper into the facility to escape the heat. I also needed some logical reason for the temperature to lower every level so I decided to go with the idea. 

I made a prototype with ice block character and a timer that made the temperature go up with it. I wanted to make the temperature increase a simple mechanic that would make the more fast paced and allow for an easy way to scale difficulty options. I did this to encourage speedrunning. Since this is a game jam game, I cant make a ton of levels, at least not during the game jam. With multiple difficulty levels and challenging, fast paced stages, I could make the game fun to replay. I decided to try to make the level design vertical to emphasize the downward progression of the gameplay. It was around this time that I began to add the ice block slamming ability. When I decided to make the main character an ice block, I had the idea that the player could turn into a literal ice block in the air to slam down into the ground. I didn’t add this when I started making the game, but I decided to try it out when I decided to emphasize downward vertical movement. I’m really glad I did add it, as I feel that it adds a great sense of flow to the gameplay. After that, I began adding other mechanics such as flaming enemies that you have to cool off to attack. I thought these fit with the temperature theme well. I then built some levels and polished everything up.

 It’s not finished yet, but I’m really happy with the game so far, especially for my first game jam game.