Furball
FurBall was my game I created for the N64Brew 2024 game jam. The theme this year was minigames, and we were given a template to go off of, as well as examples to pull from. This made it really easy to get into. My game was FurBall, a very simple game where you play as a cat (similar to lescatball), and you throw balls at targets. The most points in a minute wins. Very simple game, which is kinda what I was going for, the theme was minigames after all. I figured however simple, it would fit in with other Mario-Party style minigames. Overall I had a great time, it's honestly pretty amaxing just how good the tools are for N64 development in 2024. Libdragon, tiny3d, and Fast64 especially make game development a breeze compared to the N64's contemporaries. The PS1 doesn't have nearly the same tools, and what it does have lacks in terms of documentation and examples to learn from. No disrespect to the psx homebrew community of course. The final ROM and source code for the game jam can be found here. Be sure to check out the other games as well! Even though the game jam is over, the template serves as a good learning tool and base to start developing a game off of for those curious about N64 development. It's honestly pretty easy if you've made a game beforee, and I'd definitely encourage it!
Looking Back
Looking back there are a lot of things I would've done differently. Firstly, as many have noted, the gameplay loop gets boring pretty fast. Either a shorter timer (maybe 30s?) or somehow adding variance to the gameplay. Powerups or some way to interact with other players could have made it a more fun and engaging experience, although being ridiculously simple isn't the worst thing ever.
Adding a pause screen is something I would've liked to do as well, many of the other games in the jam have one and it was encouraged, but I was running out of time at the end, and I didn't want to break anything last minute (especially since at the time I didn't have a flashcart to test my game on real hardware).
The music also could've been better. It's a stripped-back version of my song Crystal Berry, but the lack of drums and other bits and pieces make it more abient than the original. This led to some criticism about it not fitting the frantic gameplay, and I agree, although my lack of experience with XM music and a bit of time crunch led to it being how it is. My goofy FL Studio to MIDI to Anvil Studio to OpemMPT workflow was probably needlessly complicated as well.
Lastly, I would've liked to use some of the newer tiny3d effects, especially the particle system, but again, a lack of experience and time led to those being omitted. Overall, I've learned a lot to set me up for a much better game for next year's jam, and I'm excited for it!