A Small Place

Searching for peace a penguin sets sail for a deserted island...

Inspired by A Short Hike and the creators GDC post-mortem on crafting a tiny open world peaceful exploration game I wanted to try my own hand at recreating that feeling.

Hoping to capture a cozy atmosphere and visual style I spent most of the week wrangling post processing effects for depth fogs and outlines as well as emulating the same render to texture process of A Short Hike for the "crunchy pixels" and flat light shading. I have no experience in VFX so this was tiring but taught me so much about presentation and how important it is to create your own style like that.

This is my second Game Jam submission after starting my GameDev journey a little over one year ago focusing on C++ and the difference in quality between my first jam submission a year ago and now is astounding. Particularly in how I present the games through simple moving images and lively dialogue bubbles.

The theme of the jam was Last Stand so I started with the idea of being on a small island and choosing a place to stand which would be scored on how peaceful it was and it morphed into something with more freedom and a message of where to take a stand to find your own peace.