Paper, Markers, Godot, Go!

This game was a curious one to make. I joined the GMTK 2025 with great expectations for myself, but life happened.

At work, we're at the end of the term, so I'm evaluating students' final projects. My father asked me for help with a video, so I went to film material for it in one of his classes (he's also a teacher), which took all day. On Saturday, I went to help my sister, who is pregnant, install some kitchen cabinets. By the time I got back home, around 10 p.m., I was exhausted.

I got up at 9 a.m. I had one hour to do something. So, I took a sheet of paper—not even a new sheet of paper—and scribbled a ship, a bullet, a tank, and some scenery. I took photos with my phone, sent them to my own WhatsApp, downloaded those images, loaded them into Photoshop, removed the background, and exported PNGs. I went into Godot, set up a scene, and I made the Flappy Bird flap mechanic, which is super simple. I added a bullet behind it so that it's the recoil that sends you up, using a Marker 2D attached to the bottom of the ship as the bullet's spawn point. I added some projectile logic, which, again, is a bit straightforward.

Then I added the looping scenery, which is not seamless, but I don't think it looks that bad. And I added the tanks. They didn't shoot and couldn't take damage.

With 10 minutes to deliver... I exported what I had and headed to itch... lo and behold, they granted an extra hour; thanks to server issues.

I went back to Godot, added the colliders, added a Global singleton to keep track of health, drew a heart on my sheet of paper, and copied some code from a previous unfinished project to show the hearts on screen.

I went to BFXR.net and created some sound effects, which, thanks to Godot's nodes, are super easy to add. I drew the explosion and added it too. Nothing too complicated; when the bullet hit the tanks or the ship, it would immediately be erased. So I made a simple change: instead of dying, I turned off the bullet sprite and turned on the explosion sprite, stopped the bullet from moving, and, using signals, made it so that when the explosion sound ended, the bullet would be erased. I had like 15 minutes left, got a little cocky, and decided on a Game Over screen. I drew it as fast as my markers allowed me, without chewing up the paper. I put it in its own scene, called it when the ship died, and exported with about 4 minutes before the closing time.

I uploaded—the longest 30-second upload of my life.

And I hit 'Save'.

What did I learn from developing this? That I can come up with something fast and simple in a crunch, but I wouldn't want to do it all the time—just in an emergency.