Last weekend I participated in the Global Game Jam 2013. For me it was the first time making a game from scratch and I liked the idea of returning to my student days of no sleep and sipping beer behind a monitor early in the morning. In the end we had a working platformer where all the elements are synced to a global pulse (beat) that changes over time in the level. The theme was: heartbeat.

As the bpm increases, so does the difficulty level (objects rotate, move.and disappear at a different interval). It also causes the audio to slowly change from a heartbeat to a more aggressive hardcore kick.

Unfortunately we had no real level / game designer and for that reason not a completely polished game. Everything came together 3 hours before the deadline. But it’s playable and does illustrate what we tried to accomplish.

I used Unity for the first time and must say I’m impressed. The component based  object model is flexible and almost everything you can think of is there: Audio, Shaders, Lights, Scripting / Coding environment, VS integration, etc. Definately worth trying out.

If you feel like playing it, I uploaded the game right: HERE. Use the arrow keys to move and press space to jump. Works better with an actual Controller (tried xbox 360).