{"id":591,"date":"2025-05-15T02:54:28","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T01:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/?p=591"},"modified":"2025-05-15T03:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T02:31:13","slug":"bsc3b-global-game-jam-2025-bubbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/05\/15\/bsc3b-global-game-jam-2025-bubbles\/","title":{"rendered":"BSc3b – Global Game Jam 2025 ‘Bubbles’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

These are more like a splurt of all my thoughts during and after briefing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theme: Bubbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbles is a pretty open to interpretation theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An often-used metaphor is \u2018living in a bubble\u2019 meaning to live in your own world isolated from what is happening around. Tying into themes around separation of thoughts and ideas from reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial bubbles, or economic \/ asset bubbles, are cycles characterized by rapidly increasing prices of an asset to a point that is unsustainable, causing the asset to burst or contact in value. Financial bubbles follow five stages: displacement, boom, euphoria, profit taking and bust. [ I think this is a curious branch of where the theme can go getting into very literal terms, though it’ll be harder to translate into a game idea that’s obvious to the player how bubbles come in].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbles go through a process of transformation from being cast to vanishing in an instant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re delicate, the slightest damage to their surface tension shatters it,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One unique interaction I like is how they can freeze, in cold temperatures their surface crystalises which can form beautiful patterns especially when captured in slow motion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubbles can often be found underwater as \u2018pockets of air\u2019 and in underwater games is often used as a pickup to restore oxygen like in Ty the Tasmanian tiger(2002).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One unique critter that uses bubbles is \u2018The diving bell spider\u2019 which creates an underwater bubble to store oxygen and live underwater with the bubble acting as a form of \u2018gill\u2019, arachnophobes will HATE this though which cuts off a good portion of the audience unlesss it’s a visually really cute spider like jumping spiders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find bubbles are frequently used as a theme for safety, they\u2019re an isolator separating the contents within from the outside word, in video games and movies they\u2019re often the shape of shields meant to protect the caster and their allies in proximity such as dome shields in Halo, Frost\u2019s bubble in Warframe, Titan\u2019s bubble in Destiny 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Halo promotion \u2013 dome shield repelling mortar assault)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Waframe, frost bubble)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A frequent bubble theme as well is dome-barriers over cities, In Marvel Avengers: Infinity War we see a dome shield over Wakanda which slowed down an assault from Thanos\u2019 army, in Borderlands 2 we see our only safe location Sanctuary protected by a dome shield which repelled orbital assaults from the Hyperion space station (our early campaign goals revolve around securing batteries for it, and later fails due to a compromised battery opening the city to attack).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s themes of corruption contained in bubbles in a few games too, such as the void in Risk of Rain 2 which holds dangerous enemies from the void, void mites which latch onto normal enemies and corrupts them, and standing with a void bubble damages you with exponential scaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Zenless Zone Zero we see \u2018bubbles\u2019 as supernatural disasters called \u2018Hollows\u2019 which are dark disordered dimensions which appear out of thin air swallowing the physical world, contents are subjected to dark ether corruption. In the game world we get to see an interpretation of how society adapts a threat such as hollows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m personally a really really big fan of the corrupt bubble dimensions, I like the premise of briefly entering dangerous areas for brief exploration almost like hardmode underwater (maybe I just love hazardous environments).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quite like the sound of exploring corrupt bubble dimensions,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We need to think about a style of gameplay that will fit the theme\/setting that we set out,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I just watched Loki season 1 and love the idea of using late 90s \/ early 2000s theme, I really like retro themes and it was a favourite that the team seemed to be a fan of as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bearing in mind diversifiers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audio \u2013 Soundscape, create an immersive atmosphere through use of ambient sounds rather than music. I love the idea of this, it creates a much more believable world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Code \u2013 Ingested: story evolves based on real-world data feeds creating a unique experience that changes with current events. We can replicate a table of data to feed into our gameplay loop, depending on what setting we go off of. The game could parody recent events like Trump parading about banning tiktok 4 years ago and now being thanked for unbanning it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Design \u2013 Heading Cats: Controlling 5 characters \u2013 could be a real time strategy game, right click to highlight\/control an npc and command them to clean up an area. They have to be monitored and maintained to keep them alive and serve functions in the game world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Design – Liminal space: Game is set in some kind of eerie empty space, like an abandoned mall or vacant hotel. I LOVE the idea of going into abandoned areas which could be desolate and horrifying, and scattered throughout could be these safety bubbles, which could be glimpses into the past full of colour and life. The bubbles are only temporary and vanish after staying inside for a few moments. This could work well as a horror game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had the idea of having the player explore an abandoned mall that has since corrupted, they can’t stand in the corruption for too long due to either being hunted by a monster or simply succumbing to corruption, bubbles throughout the mall provide safety for the player by repelling corruption. The bubbles are gaps in spacetime where its contents are actually glimpses of their past versions completely undecayed and functioning – the goal is for the player to find a series of monitor displaying part a number sequence they need to input to a final door so they can escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea took a lot of changes when it came to talking about it with the team I joined, they liked my idea but after a lot of discussion ideas got mixed up as to what we were committing to<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We put it to a vote if we’ll have an underwater or corrupted theme<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The team opted for a concept where we’re navigating through the euro tunnel, except it’s flooded to due a section collapsing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had an idea of what we all needed to work on and what was needed.
For dev, I was in charge of making bubble mechanic, swimming and changing states when entering bubbles and later working on a key-pad mechanic while the other indie dev worked on making a moving train system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For bubbles, I needed to figure out a way to make it so that anything within the bubble would change appearance to a fixed ‘past’ version of itself. I’m still new to making advanced materials like this where they need to change what is rendered based on other actors or parameters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Day 2:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indie dev requested I make a flashing lights puzzles where lights flash in an order which you have to repeat through a set of buttons so they see them flash in the present and have to repeat them in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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