Classroom Origami War is a simple  single-player game where you take part in an origami battle. Spend your paper resources to fold and send units by playing a quick mini-game. 

Protect your paper captain on the left while trying to defeat the enemy on the right. Win battles to earn coins, which you can use to upgrade and unlock new units in the Shop menu.

Controls :

To Spawn unit : Keyboard alphanumeric keys (1, 2, 3, 4, ...)

Origami minigame to spawn unit : Keyboard arrow or ASDW 

Tutorial :

When enough paper, click on a unit or press a number (1, 2, ...) to try to spawn it.

Then press in the correct order the keyboard arrow (or ASDW).

Unlock new Units and upgrades in the shop.

Enjoy!

Introduction

Overview: This game was developed for the Mini Jam 161: Style, with limitation the limitation "On a budget" announced at the start, it lasted 72 hours.

• Theme : Style
• Limitation : On a budget
• Duration : 72h

Game Concept

Game Title: Classroom Origami War

Concept: A battle of two children sending each other’s origami units. Defeat the enemy captain and protect. The gameplay involves folding origami units and sending them, with simple animations for folding and sending actions.

Mechanics: Players must fold the origami (unit) before they can be spawned.

Storyline: Two children playing together.

Development Experience

Tools Used: Unity for game development, and Audacity for sound editing.

Assets Used : 

• Bought UI assets (mix of old ones and a new one I bought just for the game jam (13$)).
• Old scripts from a previous game (Greenwood Defense), a similar game without the folding mechanics.

Development Process: The theme didn't really inspire me, the only game concept that I thought with the theme style is game focused on fashion, game where the focus is on cloths.

Another interpretation of the theme was "visually unique", so then I come up with the origami idea of two children imagining making war to each others with paper characters. As the theme didn't inspire that much and my goal for this game jam was to have a finished, working game, I quickly started to start working on Unity. I had this origami game idea two day before the game jam start, it happened that my idea was kind of working with the limitation.

Challenges and Solutions

Technical Challenges:

As I was afraid to be too "rusted" to scope high since the last time I participated in a game jam was 4 years ago, I hesitated on trying to make something really unique, trying to make a game genre I never made. 

I wanted to play safe and be sure to have something playable at the end, I wasn't confident in make everything from scratch, so I decided to make a game similar to one I already did (Greenwood Defense). 

It was a mistake, at first I thought that I would quickly have a working gameplay loop with the new art assets, so that I could spend a lot of time to polish the origami minigame and the game overall. 

I was so wrong, I forgot that the scripts were from a game that was two years old and had a lot of spaghetti code. So a lot of those scripts were terrible, I ended up spending more than half the total game jam working hours fixing the scripts I was importing because they were so linked together that not including all the old scripts broke them. 

I should have made the game from scratch instead of reusing old scripts from my old game with similar gameplay, it would have been much quicker (and cleaner). 

Design Challenges: I quickly had the origami minigame working (~2h)

I knew that balancing the game would be hard, so I ended up leaving it for the end as I didn't thought it was important for a game jam. I ended up not spend enough time on it, the game is unbalanced, especially, the game is really slow at the beginning. I haven't even see what the later stages looks like.

Time Management: I started the game jam at 4PM (game jam started at 6AM), with my sleep schedule messed up, I didn't even try to have "healthy" schedule.

Total : 26 hours of work time

Trello

I tried to keep the content to a minimum, sadly, the most interesting and fun part of the game seems to be unlock new cool origami Units and it is the part where I didn't put as much time as others (adding new units wasn't even hard, but all the others issues prevented me to add more units).

I could have animated them using animation rigging instead of the current simple animation.

I shouldn't have add the upgrades in the shop, they took a lot of time to be implement correctly, and for a short prototype, no one is gonna buy them if the game isn't balanced, the tasks priority was incorrect. Here is what I had in mind during the game jam (from most important to the less):

Origami minigame > Units > Audio > Art > Upgrades > UI art direction > Animation quality > gameplay loop working > game balance

Here is the order I should have had :

Origami minigame > Units > Animation quality > Art > Audio > Gameplay loop working > Game balance > UI art direction > Upgrades 

 What Went Well

Successes: 

• The unit paper style sprites looks great
• The overall mood
• The origami minigame is simple but efficient and set the mood
• The SFXs and musics are well chosen

Positive Feedback: Playtesters really like the art, but the game is unbalanced (stuck at stage 5) and too slow.

"This was a really cool style, plus a really interesting mechanic for folding the units- I actually think you could have removed or reduced the classic "wave attack" genre mechanics, like the cooldowns and even the mana, if you leaned a little more on fast-paced and accurate folding. I dunno! I will say that the pace was a little slow, and paywalls were a little high. I only got past level 2 by waiting around for 5 minutes, and immediately afterwards buying the mana-regen upgrade. I think making mana regen faster from the beginning would bring players right into the fun!" -leafar nightfall

Areas for Improvement

Technical Improvements: The game needs to be balanced, too slow and too hard

Design Improvements: 

• Add more units
• Levels need to be redesigned for a more smooth difficulty curve.
• The game must be balanced (difficulty ramp up too fast)
• Game must be faster (frogs are too slow and same for the overall game). 
• The sprite could be animated using animation rigging.
• Removed or reduced the classic "wave attack" genre mechanics, like the cooldowns and even the mana, leaned a little more on fast-paced and accurate folding.

Learnings and Reflections

What I learned: 

• Making a game from scratch might be faster and better than reusing an old similar game as template
• Adding feature when not needed might hurt the game even if it seems that it can be only "bonus content". More content means more complexity.
• A lot of work can be done with focus in such a short time  and a strict deadline
• It's CRUCIAL to have scripts that work independently and autonomously from others to easily implement them into new projects (this is what caused me the most issues)

Reflections:

Since I used a lot of old scripts from an old similar game I made, I have an unpleasant aftertaste as if all I did was to reskinned (asset-flipped) an old game and add a minigame in it... 

But this is because of the issues I encountered and even so, when making a good game, the goal isn't to put effort into making a game for the sake of it. 

All that matter is to have a good game in the end.

Conclusion

Overall, I am really happy with what I submitted, the game looks fun (even if it is unplayable because of the game unbalance).

With some game difficulty balance, more contents (units) and a bit of polish, the game could be easily be sold on Steam between 1.99$~4.99$. (I actually feel like it could do better than the game I have been working on for two years...(Greenwood Defense)

What I like the most about this game jam in particular (Mini Jam) is the perfect balance of low-pressure, just enough to push you beyond your limits without being intimidating.

I will definitely join more game jams from now on (surely the next Mini Jam), I forgot how amazing they are at teaching and forcing you to finish a product. The next time I will try to make something more unique.