Connections is a good theme idea that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.
What are your plans (if you want to share)?
In the build up to the jam I started planning out a game and started making my assets with the jope to have more time to build the game during the jam. My idea is a story based platformer, the idea of connections fits when you consider the relationship between characters, so I don't even need to squeeze in the theme ...
Im thinking of having a little robot explore a new planet and collect samples. The catch is that the robot can only go so far due to the lack of connection to its landing ship. So the goal would be to collect samples which will then allow the player to extend the range of the connection allowing the robot to go further. Not the greatest of ideas but if i can keep the scope small I hope to finish it.
I plan on blogging every day in the jam, and yesterday I blogged about this and how I got to my theme. And honestly I'm still trying to figure out how to put connection in. But I just kinda had this idea and I'm hoping to make it into something that works. I might make it into a kind of puzzler and somehow bouncing bullets off things helps people out? Maybe an idea of helping out the neighborhood?
Just had a quick look at your post, what about the targets for the bullets giving a form of energy or currency, then habing the player "connect" to a point to be able to upgrade? Or having targets that create connections to objects of the same type to create platforms or bridges, like on/off switches?
First post on my plans - /blog/1525396/gamedevtv-game-jam-post-1
Since the post hasn't been approved yet, copied below :(
Been a couple of days since the GameDev.tv game jam started. Luckily the theme fits in with an idea I've had for a couple years - a puzzle game that involves building a path from a start location to a finish location by connecting bridges with <x> number of columns. The complexity of the levels can range from stupidly simple to incredibly complex, given that there are requirements on using all of the bridges provided and doing it as quickly as possible. To prevent cheating, the player will only get one shot at completing a level to have their time count and the timer runs constantly even if you pause the game. I have plans for post-jam to implement an editor to allow creation of custom levels to make the game infinitely (relatively speaking :D). Probably won't have time to implement that in the 10 days of the jam, considering it's already the 3rd day. We'll see how many levels I can throw together as well. Planning on 24 to ship with the game by jam end, along with a couple of tutorial levels. Need to at least get the tutorial levels and 1 or 2 real levels created. Progress so far:
Back to coding :)
