It took longer than I was expecting, but I’ve finally released my first game of 2025!

This time it was for a jam I’ve never done before, Kaiju Jam.

Here’s the stats for those wondering.

I’m quite happy with that ranking, especially for this being the first time I’ve participated in Kaiju jam. Despite my inexperience, I knew enough about the jam to know I was going to be making an entry that’s unusual for the jam.

In past years there were a surprisingly wide variety of games, ranging from action-based third-person games to visual novels and tabletop RPGs. However, I found there weren’t many entries leaning into the scarier aspects of the Kaiju genre. Less Godzilla and Pacific Rim, and more Cloverfield. I recommend this PointlessHub video if you're unfamiliar with the film.

I was heavily influenced by Cloverfield, Halo, FEAR, and Half-Life. It was also initially heavily influenced by Cloverfield fangames. Or more accurately, videos of cancelled fangames, especially this one.

The initial idea was far more survival-horror, where you play as a civilian who gets caught in a Kaiju attack in the middle of an evening convenience store run. The game would’ve had the player running, sneaking and fighting through alleyways, subway tunnels and eventually a parking garage to escape.

Due to time constraints though, this idea had to be severely scaled back to focus on what I had implemented by the mid point of the jam. Which resulted in the shooter it became.

What Went Right

General Corner Cutting

The first big time save was using regenerating health, which solved a few different problems. On the level design front, I didn’t have to place health pickups around the game world. On the UX front, players weren’t dying because they didn’t notice they were low on health or forgot the button to heal. I also didn’t have to create a health pickup object, and I didn’t have to make UI for health items.

Having only two weapons meant I didn’t need UI indicating which weapons the player had available. And I didn’t need to stretch out the game to give each weapon a moment to shine, an issue I partially ran into with 2024 So Bad It’s Good jam entry Dangerous Hunts.

Deciding to cut the game down to just the section I had already done most of the work on was possibly my best idea. The parking garage asset was already largely filled in aside from vehicles, item pickups, enemies, and surrounding buildings.

Solid Shooting Mechanics

I already had decent shooting in Dangerous Hunts, then further refined it with my unreleased 32Bit jam FPS and integrated it to an actual inventory system. And finally migrated some polish from my in-development VR project.

The sum of those parts added together resulted in my most polished shooting mechanics ever! It was notably the first of my shooters where I didn’t see a streamer get screwed over by reloading, which is refreshing.

Minimal UI

An accidental feature of the game is the lack of almost any in-game UI. There’s just an ammo counter, and some hint text.

The lack of UI allowed the player to focus on being in the game’s world, wondering what would come around the next corner, and ensuring their weapon is reloaded.

Stable AI

While there was still some jank with enemy encounters, the jank came from the scripted triggers and not the enemy AI itself. There were a couple AI bugs in the initial release, but frankly I blame those more on Godot than myself. Because for some reason methods called in an animation just straight up were not being triggered. And the only solution I found was just deleting the “Call Method” track and recreating it.

I have had struggles with AI for years, usually because I’m trying something too ambitious and don’t have time to playtest/polish. But this time, the AI setup was very simple, and the behaviour tree logic worked flawlessly!

This is only the second released game to use the behaviour tree system I implemented a few months ago. So it was a good test to see how the system stood up with actual combat.

Realtime Scripted Events

I’ve always wanted to have more scripted events play out in front of the player in a Half-Life fashion. The closest I’ve come to this is the first-person cutscenes in my 2021 SBIG entry Stalewater, but the player was locked in place for those.

By not locking the player down during these scenes, it was surprisingly easier to create. I didn’t have to manually script or animate player positions and camera rotations, or handle input and what happened if the player paused in the middle of an event.

And players were impressed by them as well, so I mark it as a success.

Tone/Atmosphere

Another big focus was making the player feel like they were in the middle of a Kaiju attack and were powerless to do anything about it. The setup is you’re actively trying to escape from a failed counterattack, you’re the last member of your squad, and the whole time you hear gunfire and artillery off in the distance while the kaiju can be seen wreaking havoc in the background.

There’s no music in the game aside from the credits either, I found that further grounded the player in the setting. And every so often the kaiju will roar and make the ground shake violently, emphasizing how powerful it is in comparison to the player.

As mentioned earlier, a big influence was Cloverfield, mainly in the point that being in a Kaiju attack would suck. And from player feedback it seems I succeeded on creating this feeling in-game.

Minor Polish Touches

One thing I’m happy I got to experiment with this jam is some minor polish changes.

Not everyone noticed it, but there is a unique gunshot sound when a weapon is low on ammo. It’s more noticeable with the rifle than shotgun but it’s a nice little touch I was happy to have implemented.

There’s a one-in-the-chamber mechanic where if you reload before your gun is empty, you have an extra round in the chamber.

The loaded ammo display turns green to indicate an extra round is loaded, and red to indicate the magazine is empty.

I also followed a tutorial to implement smooth walking up/down stairs. Partly to handle the staircase in the parking garage, and more broadly to make level design in later games easier.

I even added a little Far Cry style shining wipe effect to all pickups in the game. I don’t know how helpful they are to the player, but I like them in a kinda cheesy way.

What Went Wrong

No Web Build

I knew going into this game the planned lighting and scale would make a web build impractical. But that didn’t make its absence any less noticeable.

If I hadn’t been as proactive in leaving feedback on other submissions, I doubt I would’ve received as many ratings as I did. And the number of downloads I received outside the jam is noticeably lower than the number of browser plays I’ve received for even my most recent game.

I might investigate optimizing EVAC for a web build, if only as an experiment.

Level Design Miscalculations

This was another case where a lot of level design was done in the later stages of the jam. Not quite a last-minute job, in fact I spent multiple days setting up the base of the level. But placing enemies, their relevant triggers, item pickups, and vehicle props was completed in the final 2-3 days of the 2-week long jam.

I realized one major misstep was leaving the path around the blocked ramp on the first floor open. This resulted in multiple players accidentally getting badly jump scared by what’s intended to be the second enemy.

There are also numerous times where enemy triggers can be bypassed, allowing players to get the drop on enemies in ways that are frankly dumb and not believable.

There’s lots of unused space in the game, and for the most part there’s no reason to explore the back half of most floors.

Maybe Too Scary?

The tense atmosphere made certain players reluctant to continue playing. Which can be a great compliment when your goal is to scare people, not so much when you want them to experience your whole game and provide feedback.

I think I leaned a bit too far into the tension and it became more stressful than intended. When I had my friends play the game, one of them gave up after the first floor because they became too uncomfortable.

I think a big problem is what I consider scary and what many players consider scary are at very different levels.

Players Not Looking At Realtime Events

The upside of the fully locked down cutscenes I used in previous games is the player HAD to look at them. And in a jam where you spend a fair bit of effort setting up these scripted events, it feels gratifying when players notice and appreciate them. Now the player can move and look around whenever they want, it’s easy for them to miss certain things.

When my friends played it in-person, none of them noticed the kaiju was visible outside until the very end. Something I expect other players thought but didn’t mention.

And I saw a couple livestreams where the streamer missed the tank being thrown at them. One of the streamers was distracted by the floor texture of the helicopter, which I thought was funny.

Even Valve has issues with this sometimes, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

Crunch

I’ve mentioned numerous times my big goal of avoiding scope creep and crunch in game jams. And so far, this year I had avoided crunch… But I largely achieved this by not finishing anything.

On the final day of the jam, I stayed up past 5 AM finishing the game and then actually writing up the game page content. This was the only day of the jam I had stayed up unusually late, but nonetheless I felt the effects the next day.

While I don’t regret going that extra mile with hindsight, I wish I was more disciplined in how I spent time on the game. A couple late-ish nights would've been healthier than one long slog.

Future Work

For EVAC specifically, I honestly don’t have any major plans for future updates. The game isn’t really setup to be expanded without massive reworking, and it doesn’t have any truly egregious problems players have noted. And most importantly, I just have other projects and ideas I have moved on to.

I will however be reusing and expanding a lot of the mechanics I created for EVAC, and applying the lessons learned from its development.

The new FPS mechanics like aim-down-sights, sprinting, quick melee, unique low ammo sound effects, etc. are a shoe-in for future use. Before my next shooter though I plan to implement proper round-by-round reloading for weapons like shotguns, and interruptible reloads.

I plan to use some of the more complicated behaviours possible with my AI setup. In comparison to what the NPCs are theoretically capable of, EVAC’s enemies are very simple.

Expect more real-time scripted events in the future, though I think I need to experiment with better methods or level layouts for drawing the players attention to them.

The post-jam controller support update was really helpful for learning what felt good on controller. I definitely plan to use the scripts and relevant UI/UX logic in the future. I have a few game ideas I think would play better on controller than mouse and keyboard.

I think EVAC brings me one step closer to having a project solely focused on polish. Which I still plan to try someday, if only to prove I can make such a game.

As for areas to improve, I really need to focus on balancing out my dev work during jams. It was a big goal of mine to submit to a game jam this year without any crunch. This time was more relaxed than previous jams, but I still crunched on the last day.

And my level design struggles continue, so I am hoping that I can improve on that by simply cutting the scope of the mechanics of my games and focus more on the content.

I’d also like to add hand models to my FPS games again, I think I’ve gone on too long with just floating weapons. Plus, I’ve been wanting to try making silly reload animations for some time, so expect that in a future shooter as well.

As for Kaiju jam itself, I enjoyed it. I especially loved how most of the entries were short games. I was able to play and provide feedback to multiple entries in a row without getting burnt out. I can’t say if I’ll join the next Kaiju jam, but I would like to join some of Luke’s other jams coming up this year, like MechJam and SpyCraft jam.

If you've read this far, thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings, and hopefully playing EVAC! And special thank you to Luke Herbert for hosting Kaiju Jam, and thanks to all the other entrants who made the jam a blast!