What started out as a game jam game in 2018 for Ludum Dare 42, turned into a complete game in 2023. In this article we will explore some of the story behind the development of Spring Shabobble.
Spring Shabobble started as a game jam game for Ludum Dare 42. The point of this game jam was to make a game from scratch within 48 hours with the theme "space is running out". The game jam version of the game - under the name "Easter Shabobble" - is still available if you're interested to see how the game changed. The initial game jam version got quite a positive reception. It Placed 29th out of 3069 games for graphics and received tens of positive comments from the public. The game even got an article written about it by a German blog on Linux games. It was mentioned as "The game for the weekend (and Easter): Easter Shabobble".
The theme of "space running out" gave me the vision of a little girl I've seen picking up Easter eggs, but as soon as she bends over to pick up an egg, she drops an egg that's already in her basket and she repeats this in a Sisyphean perpetual cycle. Cool, I found my theme and game loop: something around an Easter egg hunt. Next I sketched out some ideas and just put my proverbial pen to paper and started developing. I grew up with a lot of Nintendo games. Which shows in the slight hints of Captain Toad, Animal Crossing, and Zelda in the overall vibe of the game.
I knew I wanted the game to be not too challenging, but neither for it to be boring. I feel like for most games the damage and life systems are overplayed, so I opted for non-harsh penalties, being recently inspired by the puzzle platformer Captain Toad.
When you bump into enemies in Spring Shabobble, you will lose an egg which you will lose an egg which you have to pick up again. This wastes three seconds at most, but since running out of time decreases your inventory size, you will wish to avoid this. When you fall off the stage, you will return to the starting point. This can waste some time if you were attempting some platforming challenge, but it can also be used to quickly traverse back to the starting point. Since all eggs need to be transported back to the starting point, this means this feature can both waste and save time depending on how this is used.
A lot of emphasis in this game is put on being fast and setting the best time on all the levels. To add some depth I also added some collectibles in each level in the form of puzzle eggs. This adds another layer to the game which enforces you to play the game twice in different play styles. Getting all the puzzle eggs unlocks some artwork on the main menu to motivate the player to collect them all.
The original version of the game was made within 48 hours with the following tools:
Game Development
2D & 3D Art
Music & Sound Effects
Timelapse
Hardware
As you can see in the time lapse, I started with characters, animations, graphics, controls, and sound design first to get the game feeling right. After that I tried to cram as many mechanics in as I could within a reasonable amount of time. Finally with all the mechanics I've made, I made as many interesting levels with them as I could. Which for the game jam came down to 6. In the final version of the game I added many more mechanics and made 24 levels with them, added a few cutscenes, added a final boss, more puzzle elements, more level themes, and more music.
The 2023 version of the game did not do that well. Reasons being among a few: development started too late. The game was finished exactly on Easter. This is too late to be marketable; all the video game content creators will have already collected all their spring games well before Easter. There was also no marketing done on the game at all due to it being not worth it seeing how it was released too late. A better approach would've been to finish development on the game earlier, and release it on Steam as well (not just on itch). These lessons may serve to benefit the game if the choice gets made to pick it back up and update it for a future Easter celebration.
An adorable puzzle platformer where you go on an Easter egg hunt! Our little Easter Bunny Bibi lost her eggs! Can you help her find them?
