Bingo!! Dungeon!!
Video game project, made with Unity in a team of 5
Genre: Strategy, Puzzle
Last updated: October 2022 (development complete)
Play in browser: Click here
Intro
We’re now up to my fourth entry to the Game Maker’s Toolkit (GMTK) Game Jam! Released in 2022, Bingo!! Dungeon!! is a game that drops the player into a world combining the rules of Chess, Bingo and turn-based tabletop gaming. With gameplay that’s a mix between XCOM and Sokoban, this game offers the player 12 levels of growing challenge. There are two ways to win – avoid harming enemies and score Bingo with tokens that drop onto the play-field, or go hunting the enemies until none are left standing.
Compared to the Last Project
As with every GMTK Game Jam, there was a 48 hour time limit to complete the project. 2021’s project Abduction on a Budget was a better casual game, but this project was conceived as a mix of strategy and puzzling. These two genres, especially together, call for a different design methodology. We needed the goal to feel satisfying to accomplish, due to difficulty of the objective. The team took quite some time to iron out the concept, with major changes to the gameplay still being experimented with in the last 12 hours. This jam project was certainly a lesson for next time – we need to spend a little longer sharpening the axe.
Game Jam Theme
The jam’s theme was ‘Roll of the Dice’. The one rule I had during brainstorming was that we absolutely could not involve dice in any way. My suggestion for a random gameplay mechanic was a Bingo board, where tokens are randomly dropped for the player to use.
Summary of Development
The tokens began as power-ups which would buff the player’s abilities. That idea didn’t get far at all, so our coding efforts diverted to focusing on player-enemy combat. By the time we came back to the token idea, I’d had the thought that tokens should serve as an alternate win condition. This new concept was finished just in time for the deadline, but at the cost of some major bugs that slipped through due to our attention being taken by getting the token feature working. Another lesson for next time – we need to set aside time to properly play-test the game.
I’m very proud of how the team worked together this time. The trials from previous jams had taught us how to collaborate efficiently, and during this jam we made especially rapid progress.
Version History
Version 1.0 released for the jam was rather buggy. Two months later, Version 1.1 was released. It better defined the gameplay objectives, made achieving Bingo easier, redid the help screen, added tutorials and a level select screen, among other features.
My Project Responsibilities
Version 1.0
– Creating a blank Unity project with basic systems in place before the game jam
– Code for enemy movement, detecting the Bingo win condition
– Designed Help Menu & Levels 2, 9, 10, 12
Version 1.1
– Tutorial for first 3 levels, UI/UX improvements
– Level select screen, storing high scores
– Bingo mechanic improvements
– Game polish, bug fixes
To play the game in your browser, visit the itch.io page for the project! There are also downloadable versions for Windows and Linux available.
> > > Click here to visit the Itch.io page < < <
To view the source code for this project, take a look at the GitHub repo.
> > > Click here to visit the GitHub repository < < <
Screen-cap of Bingo!! Dungeon!!’s gameplay