Global Game Jam 2020: Turkey's Revenge

It's Thanksgiving and you're a parade float. Break free from the shackles of oppression and destroy the city! Wreck as much havoc as possible before the Air Force shows up to pop you. The theme of this year's Global Game Jam was "repair", but I ended up making a game about the exact opposite of that.

I like making weird stuff for Global Game Jam. This time was no exception. I teamed up with Veena Vignale, Jamie Jo Parreno, Aimee Zhang, Kyle Laporte and Brian Handy to build a cute game about destroying an entire city.

Brian & I worked together to program the turkey. It was a fun challenge to make a character move like a huge balloon. On the last day, Aimee gave the turkey hinge-joints and added some squash & stretch to it. Those changes completed the effect.

The team (left to right): Veena, Jamie, Aimee, me, Kyle, Brian.

The hardest part of building Turkey's Revenge was getting the camera to feel right. At first, we tried a fixed overhead perspective that showed the whole city like PAC-Man in a maze. It looked good, but made the game difficult to control. (When the turkey was rotated 180°, the controls would became inverted).

Next, we switched to an OTS 3rd person view. The action looked dynamic and the character controlled better, but it caused major motion sickness. We solved that problem by limiting the camera's vertical motion and pitch. The end result wasn't perfect, but at least you could play it without losing your lunch. To bring everything together, Jaime themed the UI like a news-helicopter covering the rampage.

Fun fact: this is the first over-the-shoulder style game I've ever worked on. It was also the last in-person game jam I participated in before Covid lockdowns began. I'm looking forward to when game jams can take place IRL again. 'Til next time!

Game over.