It’s very poetic how the theme - Roles Reversed - is applicable not only to the games created for the jam, but perhaps also to some people. Well, to me personally, anyway. Usually I am a profesional procrastinator, but for the sake of this event I had to design, script, playtest, debug and publish an entire game - all of that (and more) in less than two days.

The most important variable that makes or breaks any game jam game is the idea. This is not to say that the skill or knowledge aren’t important. They are. But they won’t carry a game by themselves, whereas a great idea will shine even when the execution is not perfect. And it will never be perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, especially when you’re on a strict time limit.

The next logical question would then be: „what makes an idea ‘great’?”, to which I would have to reply: „I don’t know and this is all subjective anyway”. All I can do is explain the thought process behind this specific project and hope that it will be enough to help someone, perhaps even myself next year, to come up with the greatest, most innovative idea of all time. We can all dream, after all.

Quick note: „OutBreak” was created by a team of four, however the steps laid out below are applicable to both solo devs and groups of any shape and size. 

Step one was to brainstorm as many ideas as possible: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Anything that came to our minds when we heard the words „video game” and „roles reversed”. Some of us made mental notes of our ideas, others chose to write them down. Anything works as long as you feel ok with it. 

After exhausting creative juices, the next step was to distance ourselves from the topic - to go for a walk, watch a youtube video, play a game, cook supper. The goal was to stop thinking about the theme for a bit; to give ourselves some room to breathe; to detach ourselves from our ideas.  That way, when we came back to them, we were able to look at them with more critical eye.

Then, it was discussing time! We looked back at our ideas and explained to each other why we thought our ideas had potential (solo devs can explain things to themselves by speaking aloud, which I definitely recommend, there’s no shame in that!). I personally believe that the best candidates for a great game are ideas that are easy to understand and interesting to explain to others. And what exactly is there to explain? Well, these were the questions we tried to answer:

• Does this idea fit the theme?
• Is it original enough?
• What's the fun factor?
• Can it be done in 48 hours?

Let’s look at each question individually as I try to recreate our thought process at that time.

Does this idea fit the theme? - We had many ideas that had a potential to become a good game but were ultimately rejected because we believed they didn’t match the theme. Of course, a theme can be interpreted in a variety of different ways, but we didn’t want to stretch it too much. One such idea was a game where you would play one level from many different perspectives - so that the player’s role is reversed on each playthrough. In this case - we thought about a cat whose goal would be to break a vase as soon as possible. Then, the perspective would shift to a human trying to prevent the vase from breaking. Then again, to the vase itself, dodging both the cat and the human. We kept adding and adding new perspectives which would make the game more fun… but ultimately the game would change the roles instead of reversing them - a subtle difference, but very important to us.

Is it original enough? - We wanted to avoid ideas that were a little too obvious, like playing as the bad guy / the NPC / the level itself. There is nothing wrong with these ideas and I have played and enjoyed lots of games that explored them. It’s simply that we wanted to challenge ourselves to be more creative. That’s why some of our rejected ideas include a reverse bullet hell game where you need to catch the bullets or a golf game but you play as a hole and must align yourself to match a golfer’s shot.  

What’s the fun factor? - This, in my opinion, was the most important question. We didn’t want to create a game that would be boring to play, even if it would fit the theme ideally and be very original. It’s hard to describe what a fun factor is - and perhaps someone else could take the idea we rejected and make a super fun game with it - but if we couldn’t find the fun in an idea, we had to reject it. An example of a game rejected for this reason is a game where you must build a track for a race car speeding through the level using predetermined blocks.

Can it be done in 48 hours? - That’s also very important. We had to choose an idea that we could realistically change into a finished game in less than two days. Of course, some ideas are scalable in scope - you can add or remove planned features and still end up with a fun game. Not all ideas are like that, however. Let’s look at the cat-vase-human example from before. The game’s fun factor was proportional to how many different role shifts we could squeeze in it. Stripping too many would make the game feel bare-boned. 

After filtering our ideas through these questions, we ended up with two main ideas: one of them you already know - it’s OutBreak. The second idea had a working title „Bullet Heaven”. It was a variation on the reverse bullet-hell idea where you want to catch bullets, but there’s only one bullet - and it constantly flies away from the player. We even had this lore ready where it was a lonely person trying to get hit by a cupid’s arrow meant for someone else.

Well then, what made OutBreak the winner? With only two candidates remaining, we decided to create simple proof of concept for each game - with empty backgrounds, simple shapes for graphics and basic mechanics. After a short playtesting session we unanimously decided that our block-repairing game felt better to control. It simply clicked.

With the jam starting at 7 PM our local time, coming up with the idea was more or less everything we accomplished on the first day. Despite its short length, it may have been the most important day of them all. It gave us our idea. And our idea gave us lots of motivation to keep jamming. And jam we did. But that is a tale for days two and three.