Handfull
Developed for LVL's Game Jame 1.0
Theme: "One hand"
Time: 48h
Handfull is a an homage to all the schoolyard snowball battles most of us northerners have grown up with. You play a last kid standing snowball fight.
Interpretation of theme
What can you do with one hand? Throw snowballs!
We leaned into the concept of playing the game single handed. Making use of the modern Analog stick and bumper controls, the game is played with one hand.
Navigating with the thumb stick while gathering snow and throwing snowballs with the bumpers on a modern controller.
Gameplay
You play as a kid in a Free for all schoolyard snowball fight.
Try to knock out your opponents by hitting them with a well placed snowball. All while hunting power-ups and dodging incoming snowballs.
Players have 2 lives. On the first hit, players lose their hats. On the second hit a player is knocked out. Their character starts making snow angels.
Players can find several power-ups around the map.
Extra hat - Armor that absorbs one hit
Speed up - Faster movement speed
Gather speed - Faster snowball gathering speed
Power up - Faster throw charge rate
Deep pockets - Allows you to store more snowballs for faster rate of fire
Fun technical features
Snow deformation
Randomized character appearances (Clothing color, skin color, hairstyles & helmets)
Powerups
Summary and Reflections
Handful was the first game jam i participated in, also one of my earlier unreal projects. Handful was a mashup of fun technical features I had played around with at the time. This was the first time I had implemented snow deformation in a project, which admittedly took a lot of the alotted time. And was on the verge of what I could manage as a single programmer.
Doing some basic character randomization was probably the biggest take away. During the play tests and showcase the different hats gained a token value feeding some fun banter.