Sir Stackems - Houdini Game Jam 1st Place

Play it here!

This year I entered the Houdini Game Jam 2021 with some amazing people, and made a game about a cheeseburger. You fight sandwiches, take their toppings to stack yourself higher and higher. We ended up getting 1st place which I absolutely freaked out over!

Theme

The theme for the jam was “Food Fight.” We came up with a variety of ideas for what that could mean and eventually made our way to a game about stacking toppings to get your burger real tall. One of my favorite ideas though was a cooking game where you make some food, then that food has to fight other food in some arena, and your stats depend on how well you cooked it, but I guess that’ll have to wait.

Programming

I was mainly in charge of the programming and Unity integration side. The player controller is a Unity store asset, but just about everything else was me. The hardest part was probably getting the toppings to stack well. They’re all connected by joints and getting them to line up properly was kinda a pain, cause ya know, physics. In the end it works okay but I’d like to go back and do it some other way because right now when you get too many toppings you just kinda slump over and can’t right yourself.

Design

The actual game is pretty simple design wise, but I think my favorite part is the toppings representing health. It such a simple and easy to understand mechanic and I’m not sure I’ve seen it before. It’s really satisfying seeing all the piece fly everywhere and being able to pickup enemies toppings to bolster yourself up. The rest of the game is pretty basic stuff, but the stacking makes it really enjoyable.

Retrospect

For a week long game, I don’t think there’s much I’d want to change. There are a few bugs, like not being able to respawn sometimes, but I really like what we made. The biggest thing I do want to change though is the stacking. I’d like to make it more reliable and not flop over after a certain point. When making this I kept thinking of Katamari and wanted to just add as many toppings as possible. All and all its great and you should play it!