This is the first devlog for "Gems Finder"!

Day 1

On the very first day, the theme was revealed. It's called "There and Back". I was a bit confused on what it was, so I asked the group. They mentioned it like a cycle, going from one place then return to that same place. I tinkered around for a while on how to merge collectibles and the theme together. Finally, I got the game idea for the game jam. The game will revolved on the player to get the collectibles then return back at the same position. The players are the finders to find gems in a mine. There will be a time limit, tho. If the player's time limit is up, the room will start shaking and there will be falling  debris around the screen. So I started making the character models and the room. However, I'm not really good at making advanced animations, such as spinning. The collectibles I want, however, should spin. Luckily, I found a perfect asset for that. La Red Games made some assets for gems and coins. I downloaded them and used the gems. I used all gems except the gray gem because I like colorful gems. Here's the link if you want to download them for yourself: https://laredgames.itch.io/gems-coins-free

I also remembered that 8 Bits to Infinity Game Jams usually had a challenges to take the developers up a notch. I looked at it and noticed the first challenge: Theme Party: Use a theme and/or limitation from one of the past 8 Bits to Infinity jams in addition to the main theme. I looked around the past jams and found this: https://itch.io/jam/platformer-week. A platformer game jam with the theme of Darkness. Darkness fits my game, so why not? And so I did. And on the first day, I ended up with the player movement and its simple animation, collectibles, backgrounds, and a darkness as a challenge for the players.

Day 2

On the second day, I thought of making the collectibles a bit useful to the player. In Super Mario Bros, if you get 100 coins, you'll get extra life. In my game, I'll use those gems for currency. Every after 5 levels, the players will go to a shop and will provide something useful to them, such as extra jump, higher speed, extra time for 10 seconds, and larger flashlight. And I also change a bit of the game mechanics, where instead of having a timer in every level, I decided to have a continuous timer in every level. I started making the layout for the shop and it works properly. I also decided that the price of every item will increased by 2 gems every time the player buys it. And every gem will count as a different gem where different gems will be used to buy different items. This is what I got for now.

This is posted on half of the second day, so I'm probably going to make some solid platforms, jump-through platforms, and others for the level designs. I'll post more soon, either later or tomorrow.