GUY SAVES HIS MARRIAGE

Guy Saves His Marriage was my entry for the GMTK 2021 Game Jam, and was made in 48 hours by myself and Colin Martin. The theme of this jam was "Joined Together", which we eventually decided to follow by making every level interconnected like a giant, puzzling spider web.

The mechanics of this game were simple - basic platforming movement with some wall jumps in the mix. However, the complex part comes in when you finish a level. Finishing a level stores your horizontal and vertical speed into the Paradoxes in the other levels, which apply saved speeds to you when touching one. The puzzle of this game was saving the right speeds to make certain jumps or to remove obstructions. You could replay old levels at any time, and the speeds saved in Paradoxes would only change when you beat a level - all Paradoxes held the same saved speeds, no matter what level you were on.

That mechanic provided an immense challenge for me with the level design, but I had a blast with it. In short, I had to make a set of levels that would allow you to save specific speeds (and only those speeds), and then design the platforming of other levels to require certain saved speeds to beat. The end result is a puzzle game that asks you to replay its levels to get the speed you need to beat the next one. Sometimes this would even demand chaining levels together to get a new speed, or triggering checkpoints so you could leave and come back with a new speed.