Sax-o-bones Retrospective

Heya! What a wild jam, huh.

Lord of the Sax-o-bones is a quick game about a kingdom, and the lich whose saxophone skills they gravely insulted. In it, you control a small group of freshly dead minions to overrun the castles of those who oppose you.

After we saw the theme, we agreed on some form of game where you control multiple monsters, but it took a bit longer to settle on the details. We wanted a singular creature in the lead, but insectoid aliens felt overplayed. So instead; a lich with a horde of undead minions. Everything more or less fell into place from there.

Both members of the jam team this time around were trying something new. I (Vulkaara) tried out some new coding methods and took a long jaunt into the wide wide world of voxel art. After downloading MagicaVoxel off of github- a wonderful program that I do recommend, I spent a lot of time working with the medium. Many of the models didn’t make it into the final game- I’ve included a particularly sad horse that was left on the cutting room floor when we swapped to less detailed units. I’ll be sure to poke around with more voxel art in the future; though not likely for another jam or two.

I (PhyrexianPerfection) had a little experience performing music before (singing), but I haven’t really tried composition before. My knowledge of music theory was very rudimentary. Over the course of this GameJam, I had to teach myself the very basics, but it’s hard to know where to start. I learned how to compose a melody over chords, and ways to reuse that melody to create repetition. I also experimented with developing chord progressions of my own, and adding simple harmonies to a melody. I’ve started to grasp the basics of composition, and hope to develop my skills in future GameJams.

It was also our first time working as a team, and we feel the results speak for themselves!