Computer Troubles

Computer Troubles

A short, browser based, game influenced by pop-up advertisements – created in the GMTK 2020 Game Jam under the theme “Out of Control”. This game was made in my first ever game jam with all assets being made by myself (with the exception of the background behind the computer screen in the top image).

I settled on this idea quite quickly after the theme was released to the public and got started working on the prototype of the gameplay. This took quite a long time, ultimately because I was still new to programming at this point – with only a couple of months of experience, but eventually I got a working prototype, but it still wasn’t really a game and needed some form of basic scoring system and tutorial. I left that for the next though and got to work on making the different art assets in the game – which was just mostly different forms of pop-up adverts that I made.

As a part of my design though, I wanted the computer to start “bugging out” after a certain amount of pop-ups were closed to increase the difficulty curve as the player was going through the mini-game.

The first element of added difficulty was to have 3 different browsers start to open and close randomly. This was achieved by using Random.Range to pick a random browser, and have a coroutine open it up, leave it for a random amount of seconds and then close it. Some of these browsers showcased below.

Following this, I added two other mechanics, one was to have the player’s cursor start duplicating across the screen, the other being that the frame rate of the game start to slow down.

The final implmentation was the high score system, and after that there was not enough time to do anything else, and I had to submit!

Ultimately, I am proud of this game even though it definitely could have been a lot better. It was still only a first attempt at a game jam, and the experience was fantastic! It’s definitely a game I could see myself trying to remake now that I have some more experience under my belt.

Project Duration:

48 Hours

Team of: 1