Froggy gamejam 1

Im not sure what to do today. I want to do something, but I have not decided on a small project I want to work on. I guess as the webtest game on my site is unfinished this is the thing I will focus on.

Bahlgs game I tried yesterday was really fun. It was very simple, but I think the constant “number going up” and “dozens of effects per second” on screen hooked me.

A couple of hours later I was looking for a simple project to do. Vampire survivors clone does not interest me that much, and I need something very simple. Scrolling through itch gamejams I found this cute one:

https://itch.io/jam/summer-frog-jam-2026

And it starts in 3 hours! Theme is not even out yet, but I want to do something basic and frog related. Look how cute it looks.

So I sketched up some VERY basic mechanics:

This time I will focus on keeping it as basic as possible.

Art

I found interesting sprites i want to use https://toadgirl.itch.io/mr-and-mrs-dudeS

https://melloinc.itch.io/cursor-frogs-32px

https://caz-bee.itch.io/froggy

I wanted to edit them already, because i need a back view when the frog is jumping upwards. BUT, this will not finish the game at all. So I will focus on making the jumping mechanic first.

Prototype

What do we need: Grid map, so that we can create a functional jumping system. The frog is only able to jump a specific distance. Movement is chess like. So it needs to be a grid.

As I drew this two ideas:

make the game crayon based? Frogs are cute, if the level is crayon made it could fit. I would need specific textures or a filter for that. Which isnt bad, there was a CRT filter i always liked, I want to test out shaders.
forgot the other idea, SHIT it was not a bad one

Animation imported. Now i need the movement. For that the level needs to be scaled based on the Sprite of the character. As I move from grid to grid, pressing once means moving one cell (or jumping multiple). For that we need a jump distance based on pixels.

As most people use 16:9 displays, I will go with: 320×180 or 640×360 All divide evenly into 1080p, 1440p and 4k.

320x180 seems perfect

So the creator of the frog defined the sprite as 32x32. I guess I will just go with that. But i scaled down the frog by 50% as the levels would be too small otherwise. There are other issues now though:

I guess this will end up being a status bar or something. Also, there will be a skybox? So I should not worry about that for now.

Nice basic movement works!

So as this is not a physics based movement (because i use the grid based system), I stripped myself of the ability to just use the jump animation and to let the jumping be done by the physics. As I am moving 32 pixels and my jumping animation has 6 frames, i could use 1 frame per 4 seconds. This could imply jumping? Or maybe thats to “strict” movement? Lets try it out.

Tween did the trick.

Also added tween TRANS_QUAD and EASE_OUT for better feel.

	var tween = create_tween()
	tween.tween_property(self, "position", new_position, MOVE_DURATION).set_trans(Tween.TRANS_QUAD).set_ease(Tween.EASE_OUT)
	tween.finished.connect(_on_move_finished)

Then used the https://pixelfrog-assets.itch.io/tiny-swords free assetpack to generate some floor tiles.

Final look (for today):

Things to add/check:

Add small shadow below frog? Which gets smaller when he jumps?
Make the first level. If its not fun, trash the idea.
Do not forget to add credits
Add menu and keybind mapping?
Jump only with space
Jump direction indicator

I am happy about the progress today. Also, as I just started, I wanted to invest a couple of minutes. I did not track the time, but it was about 2,5 hours. Did NOT feel that way.