GMTK Jam 2024 Submission (v0.1.0)

I just submitted this prototype for GMTK Jam 2024!

This ended up being a relatively simplistic prototype, but it was pretty fun to work on! I wanted to experiment with more less conventional rendering techniques, so I ended up making a 3D view that is done entirely in a fragment shader with ray marching. All the visuals are done with only really 3 primitive objects--a rounded box for the bricks, cylinders for the inside/roofs of the towers, and a plane with a bit of added noise for terrain. By using domain repetition techniques, the cost of rendering doesn't actually scale at all with any additional towers on the screen, so in theory this works well for something that can endlessly scale! I might make a more detailed log about all the techniques done with this procedural generation in the future.

I also enjoyed making this little economy simulation. The whole thing feels like a little mini-game, like one of the ones where you're blowing up a balloon but you don't want to put too much air into it. It was a fun mechanic to mess with!

In retrospect, I think I should have balanced this to let you grow it a bit faster. Maybe a good idea for an update for after the jam. There's probably also some more tweaks I can make to improve the rendering quality, performance, and random generation.

If you're reading this post, please check the game out! It would mean a lot to get feedback on the different things I'm trying out this time around :)