Orc Survival and Coco Code Jam #1 2025

For the roadmap of updates, scroll to the end of the post.

This game has been created for the first Coco Code Game Jam, following the theme of Poison.

As the results of the jam are now in, I thought it might be time to post a devlog and tidy up a bit.

Why the Coco Code Game Jam?

I chose to participate in this jam because although I have been working on learning the skills I need for game development over the last year, I still have a lot to learn and this jam, being open to everyone of any skill level, seemed like a good fit.  There was a reasonable number of entrants, and although it was fairly sizeable, there were no direct benefits for winning, just the fun of participating and the recognition if you did get into the top 10.

One of the biggest reasons though was the timing of the jam.  For most of the development time of the jam I had a week off from work, and was wanting to participate in another jam.  This meant I was able to put in more time than I had on previous jams and more focus.

Orc Survival

When I found out the theme of the jam, I started to think about "Poison", and what it meant to me as a word.  In my everyday life I don't really deal with hazardous chemicals or materials, so the idea of poison is almost fantastical, relegated to TV dramas, stories, movies and games.  When I realised this, I also realised that a lot of people would likely be making games about poison in the literal sense, games about tasting food, poisoning targets and making poisons.  I wanted to make something a bit different, so following that fantastical connection, I came up with the idea for a game set in a poisonous fantastical world, which became a world about an Orc living in a poisoned land.

I then needed to think about the core mechanics I wanted to implement.  So I thought that Orc's are generally depicted as brutish and strong, but not always intelligent or magically inclined.  I also thought that normally, they are shown in subservience to some kind of "Dark Lord" where they form part of the legions of the Dark Lord, and are therefore normally supported, in a survival sense, by other castes from the legions of monsters employed by the "Dark Lord".  So, what if the Dark Lord was gone?  The Orc's would be trying to survive in a poisoned land by their wit and capabilities, gathering resources and hunting monsters to survive.

That became the premise for Orc Survival, and meant that the type of game I was wanting to make would be a survival style game with an element of exploration and crafting.

During the Jam

With an idea and core mechanics locked down, it was time to go to work.  To be able to implement the mechanics in a way that I thought would make sense, I felt I needed to include some variety in the harvestable resources and the enemies and environments that could be interacted with.  So I initially scoped for the game to have 4 different types of maps to explore; a player home, an overworld, a cave style dungeon and a crypt style dungeon.  To be able to get the work done within the 1 week time limit, I decided to make the game a top down 2D style game.

When I normally have a solid idea of the mechanics and scope of the game, I start with the game art assets.  For this game, that meant 2D sprites and tile sets, and I spent about 27 hours making hundreds of individual sprites to use in my game.

Once this was done, I started on the actual development of the game, this took around 40 hours, and started with figuring out the core mechanics of crafting and item management.  While I ended up with a system that works, the system is simple and unrefined, but works as intended.

Due to the scope and time taken, there are elements I had planned that never made it into the jam submission, such as throwable items, villagers and sound effects.  I was also hoping to make a full new set of music for the game, but ended up having to reorganise some songs I had made recently instead.

Overall, the game was submitted with about 80 to 90% of what I had scoped for the game.

Following the development period, the game received above average engagement and performed as expected in the final results.  The game was in the top 33% of submissions, with strengths in Art and Innovation, while Fun Factor and Theme Alignment were weaker.

The feedback commented on the submission followed a theme as well.  The game was consistently described as looking good overall with an emphasis on the large scope of the game.  The only negatives received were a suggestion to improve lighting, change the UI font, and that the pacing of the game was a bit slow.

What's Next (Future Updates and Expansion)?

Overall, this is the first game jam game I've made that has had a scope that could not be reasonably met within the time limit of the jam.  There are several features I was unable to include or tidy up before the deadline and, if I manage to continue with this game, I will need to introduce these features and redesign other features to bring it to the standard I would have liked for the jam.

For further expansion, following the feedback there are several things to consider, but if I will be taking this game further I will need to improve the pacing of the game, especially if I expand it, and refine a lot of the systems and elements in the game to be able to turn it into a complete game.

As it stands now, I have organised a rough plan for a series of updates that should, first get to the stage I wanted the game to be in for submission, and then improve upon it to make it a full game, not just a game jam game.

The updates (currently planned) are:

• GameJamUpdate - This update will be focussed on including the features of the game I wanted to include in the game jam version, and will serve as a basis for future updates.  This update will still only be a Web Playable Only.
• CombatUpdate - This update will focus on improving the combat system so it will work in a clean and more visible way in game.  As a part of this update, Enemy AI, Throwable Items, and a more involved tutorial will also be reworked and included.  This will only be available for Web Play.
• CraftingUpdate - This update will primarily focus on updating the UI and refining the inventory and crafting systems.  This will only be available for Web Play.
• WorldUpdate - Where the previous updates are primarily focussed on refining the game that has already been made, this update will focus on adding new content, reorganising the maps and level structure, adding new levels, new enemies, new items, new NPC's and a playable story line.  Depending on how the work progresses, the WorldUpdate, might be split into several updates.  The overall aim would be to turn the Web Playable version into a demo of the full game, where the full game would then be paid for and available as a downloadable game (hopefully).