Make a game in 48 hours! This was the monumental task placed upon the gather group of students at the Centre for Digital Media’s Design Jam.

Droplet was a 2d flash based game that had the player controlling a small water droplet lost in a maze of pipes. By walking over heating or cooling vents, players could change the state of the water droplet (heating into steam, or freezing into ice) in order to bypass obstacles.

Along with the task of escaping the maze to return to the ocean, players could take on the extra task of rescuing all 12 lost mini-droplets. Few were able to achieve this monumental task, but it provided with an interesting goal for players who continually returned to the game hoping to find the optimal path to a perfect rescue.

Lead Programmer
In this project, I was one of three programmers on our 5 person team. Having the most experience in Flash programming, I quickly took lead in establishing the core structure of the game. Sonu Sharma, a talented programmer in his own right, but unfamiliar with Flash’s programming structure, took up the torch with me as we decided to employ an Extreme Programming approach. His knowledge of logic and algorithm design, paired with my knowledge of flash’s capabilities had us creating quick prototypes with constant debugging.

Prototype early, and prototype often was the name of the game when it came to creating Droplet. The approach we ended up taking to the development of the game was very organic and worked perfectly for our situation. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun. The high-stress and tight-deadline structure of the Design Jam kept us all on the edge of our seats. Can’t wait for the next one!