1Button Game Jam Postmortem

For my very first game jam, I entered the 1-Button Game Jam 2023. The only strict requirement for the jam was that the game had to only use a single button and no mouse movement. The game I chose to make was an adaptation of Breakout that uses the left mouse button to fire a bouncing bullet out of an automatically rotating turret. The goal of the game was to reach the highest score possible by clearing all of the blocks in the fewest number of shots. A stacking bonus was also awarded for consecutive blocks broken with one shot.

I chose to make this game because I was inspired by the amount of fun Atari games could create using very simple graphics and control schemes. Breakout was an easy pick because of its simplicity. The idea for the bouncing bullets came from needing a gameplay mechanic that was more interesting than simply shooting at the blocks individually. Without the ricochet mechanic, the game felt like there was a very low amount of skill expression. So, with this in mind, I set out to make the bouncing bullet the core focus of my development. I spent a large part of my week's work on testing variations of the number of bounces, the bounces on blocks, etc. I also created sound effects for the bullet bouncing and the block breaking with the goal to make them as resonant and satisfying as possible.

After my initial round of playtesting, I got some valuable feedback from my testers that they wanted more bounces, and potentially some level variations. After adjusting a few gameplay parameters, I spent the last couple days working on UI improvements like a game over screen and displaying bonus text where applicable.

Overall, the response to the game has been stellar. Most people seemed to really enjoy the challenge and found the game-feel satisfying. I think a large part of this came from the sound effects and the little score numbers appearing over the blocks as they broke. The ease of replaying after a game over also helped make the game "addicting" in that there was very little time to feel frustration and lose motivation to try again. I was initially worried that obtaining a high score would not be enough of an incentive, and I think that was mostly accurate. Judging by my feedback I think people were really aiming to clear the board, and would replay until they did.

The common critique of the game was that there was only a single level. I figured that this would happen, as I myself felt the same way. However, given the time constraints I was not fully confident in my ability to make and test more levels. Additionally, I was not sure how I wanted to go about implementing them. 

I am very happy with my experience during this game jam, and I am also happy with my game. There are definitely areas to improve, but to have such a successful project as my first one is greatly encouraging!