Updating the game for Improve My Game Jam 22

I am going to participate in Improve My Game Jam by anomrac21, and the jam runs from 22 to 29 July. I found the jam on the Indie Game Jams website. Instantly, I found it very interesting. Unlike jams I entered in the past, you can only work on a game you started making before the jam. It’s a jam when you improve on a game and bring it closer to completion.

I made a game about Tamagotchi in Unreal Engine 4 in my second year of university called Open Tamagotchi as a piece of coursework. As it was coursework, there was a requirement and a demanding time. The requirement was to have aspects of Blueprints and C++. I only used blueprints in Unreal until then. The game I made was more simulation than a game as I had two previous tasks, whereas I made Tamagotchi as a simulation in Visual Studio.

As I originally wrote about the game, I want to make it more like a simulation game like The Sims, Stardew Village and Cities. I am doing this by letting the player control the Tamagotchi with a keyboard or controller. It is possible the way I imagined, but I haven’t tried it in a complete game scenario yet. The idea is to start small, well, I have to bring it closer to completion.

As I have spare time this week, I might make progress before the jam begins. You learn more as you use a game engine, so I learned a lot after the coursework. I am better equipped, and I watch tutorials. I always say if you just watch and copy off a Youtuber. It’s technically their work. However, I think an essential skill to copy and take time to teach yourself. I have also always modified it slightly to make it unique.

I am a game programmer on a game dev degree, but I can model too. As part of the coursework, I made my own Tamagotchi so you might see my custom assets in the game too.

I am very excited to participate in this jam and bring Open Tamagotchi closer to completion. I know I don’t own the Tamagotchi concept, but I hope to bring it to this generation. The game source files will eventually be on Github. An updated demo will be up on Itch.io when the jam is finished.

Thank you very much for reading