Plummies

Plummie (pləm ē)

variants - Plummy

An anthropomorphic plum that wants to be your friend.

Story

Hipp have landed on a planet that was thought to be previously explored. The equipment that was left behind has been damaged, when previously it was noted there was no life. Now, Hipp must return to find out what was the cause of this issue.

Controls

Move: Arrow keys (WASD if you're dexterous)
X: Interact
Q: Call nearby
E: Dismiss nearby
Tab: Map
Backspace: Pause Menu

Escape: Quit on title

Plummies follow whatever they see someone else doing. Interact with an object in front of a Plummy to get them to follow. Call them to get them to stop. Once a Plummy learns a new trick, if dismissed it will walk back to whatever it can find available... including harmful things.

Mac's Guffin is hidden in plain sight, surrounded by a floor that teleports you away. 

• If you are teleported, any Plummy you have following you will run away.
• If a Plummie is teleported, it will become scared and run away.
• Once you have the Guffin, if you are hurt/teleported you drop it.

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Credits

Programming: MrTroy
Art: rhos & MrTroy
UI Graphics: rhos
Music: MrTroy - Main Game Theme | Credits Theme
Font: More by somepx
Palette: cc-29

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Questions from the Showcase:

How I Came up with the Concept:  I wanted to expand on two of my previous games Welcome to Urf! & Planet Nanadoo: Quest for the Powered Fruit. Planet Nanadoo had vibes about it I weren't happy about in retrospect. The whole crash landing on an alien world and blasting your way home made me feel weird, but I loved my voxel style from back then. If I had a do over, I'd make it a lot  more passive like Welcome to Urf! is.I wanted to focus more on somewhat relaxing game play but, encourage the player to explore more instead of doing the easiest things 5 feet from the start (That's the problem I had with Welcome to Urf!)

Challenges I overcame: Fighting scope creep. I wanted to add so many toys (things to play with that weren't story based). I had a siren (of the sea... not like police) concept where you had to make sure your Plummies weren't around a hole while music was playing out of it, or else they were stuck listening until the song ended. That didn't make the final build because my music making desktop stopped working. I think once I tried to turn it off it said "No more , boss. I'm tired." and I left it alone after that. 

The other challenge I faced was trying to solo this jam. I mean I succeeded. I was able to repurpose assets I purchased to fit them theme, but... music is one of my least viable skills. So, I made sure I spent a week coming up with those three tracks.

Favorite & Least Favorite Parts of Development: I've been making games in some way shape or form for a majority of my life. I learned how to code before I learned how to read. In my youth I was a copy-paste-grammer, until I understood the basic concepts.

Inspirations: Rusty's Retirement, Mario 128 and Pikmin. I kept wondering what ever happened to that 2001 Mario 128 demo, and I read it became Pikmin. So, I borrowed some of the concepts from both. I wanted to make a non-violent cozy game (That's why there's no real combat), where the goal is to collect them all. Here's a hint... The end credits screen has different saying if you collect different Plummy amounts. I thought Rusty's Retirement looked  cute and based Hipp the Hippo off of that design. I of course added arms and ears.

How long I've been Jamming for:
I've been jamming for about 9 years now. Starting in 2015 when I left the game industry.  I've done game jams that are 3, 24, 48 and 72 hours. A few that were 9 days, 14 days. This one, was the longest jam I've participated in, which is why I'm so happy with the end results.

Will there be more?:
I can't say there's a lot of content in this, but during testing when I knew where all the Plummies were, and collected all 128 of them, it still took me a half an hour to do so. And that was with the randomizer turned off (Press backquote ` on the title screen to turn off the randomizer). If enough people play this and think I need to do more with it, I'll gladly figure out what more can be done and build more. But, I also feel it's safe to say this is a one and done.