Global Game Jam 2021 Quick Wrap Up

4 min readFeb 2, 2021

Another year for Global Game Jam and it’s my 4th GGJ. This year is definitely a special one since it’s fully online. I stayed at home over the weekend and simply did a casual solo jam. Here’s just a quick wrap up and showing off the game, Blow My Wig, I made this year.

Theme

The theme of this year is “Lost and Found”. To me, it’s actually an easy topic and almost every game can “fit” into it. For example, Mario lost and found Princess Peach, Frappy Bird got lost and find the exit. That’s probably not how “Lost and Found” means exactly but that’s where creativity comes from.

Game Ideas

The first thing that came to my mind, is actually the expansive ring my girlfriend lost on a beach last week 😢. I was thinking to make a fishing game that picking a fish and unexpected ring by chance. After a quick search, there’s a lot of fishing game already and they doesn’t look fun.

The second idea came to my mind is that, what would be the most embarrassing thing that people lost and want to find it back so badly? Yes, a wig it is! Controlling your character to find the flying wig back definitely sounds like a fun story.

Getting Start

Since I jam solely, I have to get some well-made assets to start with. I know some people may think it’s against the game jam spirit, but I believe as long as I learn something and making my idea come true, there’s no hurt doing it.

After spending some time on the Assets Store, I’ve found two very good assets that match the style each other:
- Blocky Snake
- Simple Apocalypse — Cartoon Assets

Blocky Snake is a well-structured snake-like game, with functionalities such as changing characters and different maps. Simple Apocalypse has a bunch of great blocky characters with awesome animations built-in.

So my game would base on the game Snake, but a character keeps collecting wig of his (and others) and put them ALL onto the head, instead of a snake growing its body.

The “re-skin” tasks can be broken down as:

Make the character bold and create a simple wig
Replace the character and the collectible wig (Blocky Snake doesn’t have a document and I had a hard time finding all required reference)
Add a simple intro story
That’s all

Blow My Wig

So, this is my game for Global Game Jam 2021 — Blow My Wig:

It’s a peaceful weekend morning and you are having a great time in a park. Suddenly, a strong wind came from nowhere, and your super cool wig is flying on the air…
Start your adventure to find your (and maybe others’) wigs!
A snake-like game which you need to collect the wigs (yea they seem belong to someone but you grab them anyway) and put them all on your head. Try to avoid any obstacles or otherwise your wigs would fly away again.