Moochi Games - Jackstrap

20 Apr

Just another gameplay video after doing lots of under-the-hood stuff. #jackstrap #gamedev #indiegames

I've spent the last few weeks making a bunch of different versions of jackstrap, trying to figure out how to make the game more fun. different combo systems, enemy behaviors, wrestling, pinball, puzzles, beat 'em up... pretty much anything I could think of.

this is my current menu of playable experiments. and it's not even all of them. some were terrible, some were surprisingly fun, and a few made me question the whole direction of the game.

I'm actually pretty excited about some of these new variants! still figuring things out, but I think I'm getting somewhere. can't wait to show you some updates soon! #indiedev #gamedev #godotengine #indiegame #devlog #jackstrap

I've been making Nutcracker enemies for Jackstrap, and things are getting a little out of hand. Which one looks like the biggest pain to fight?

give these baddies some love

Moochi Games - Jackstrap@moochi.bsky.social

I'm making a game about a living jockstrap protecting his family jewels. naturally, the enemies are Nutcrackers. meet: chompers, nutshot, crackstache, and a couple of their unhinged friends.

zurl.coDevlog 32 - Building a Visual LanguageUI artwork experiments, gem currency, a working color palette, and an enemy table start turning scattered art into a visual system.

Devlog 32: Making Jackstrap's art feel cohesive. I'm redrawing attacks for UI cards, keeping elemental effects in color against black-and-white ink, refining a ~32-color palette, and working on gems and enemy roles. zurl.co/YGkJg

I'm making a game about a living jockstrap protecting his family jewels. naturally, the enemies are Nutcrackers. meet: chompers, nutshot, crackstache, and a couple of their unhinged friends.

I've been staring at my game's combat for months and can barely judge it anymore. This is Jackstrap, a 2D action roguelite about a sentient jockstrap fighting Nutcrackers. Does it actually look fun? Honest criticism welcome.

zurl.coDevlog 31 - Enemies Start MovingA flying Nutcracker attack, a better animation export workflow, new VFX tests, screen shake, and a strange spring-headed enemy.

Enemy animations are drawn and colored. Now come dust, impacts and screen shake, because a flying headbutt deserves some drama. Devlog 31 - Enemies Start Moving zurl.co/sUYlP

before: 77 mystery files named "sin título 4_1" after: " foo_ahh_01" , " ha_03" , " hoo_ah_02" , and " woo_ah_01" this is a professional game development studio

on second thought...should I keep these POW/PAF/BAM comic effects?

zurl.coDevlog 30 - Locking the First Enemy LineupThe first public enemy lineup gets narrowed down, with scale tests, stronger silhouettes, and the first full animation passes.

Chompers is already running, attacking and dying beautifully. Three core enemies, a couple variants, clearer silhouettes, better scale, and proper animation sets for each. Devlog 30: locking down Jackstrap's first enemy lineup. zurl.co/19iFy

Godot editor plugins are dangerously appealing. I'll start by wanting one button and 40 minutes later I'm designing a tiny application inside the editor.

one punch. several drawings. far too much time.

just sent my lawyer a ZIP with 20 legal files and threw in a REAMDE.md so he knows how to navigate it. lol, no idea if people do that, but if someone sent me 20 files, I’d definitely appreciate it.

this probably isn't staying in the game. which is a shame because POW/PAF/BAM was doing a lot of work here.

This must be the most egregious and annoying dark pattern. @Xiaomi makes you wait 60s to press a button for you to download your _own_ data. ...then tells you you could wait 15 working days for it. I almost lost it when I saw this. guess I'm buying the fit air after all

I love tiny CLI scripts that do exactly one boring thing I keep having to do. not everything needs an app. sometimes I just want one command I can forget about.

zurl.coDevlog 29 - Designing the Nutcracker ArmyNutcracker research, bigger mouths, stranger movement, and the first serious pass at making the enemy cast feel distinct.

new devlog up. the Nutcracker problem: how do you avoid every enemy looking like the same wooden soldier in a different hat? answer: huge mouths, big gums, and moves inspired by the creepy, jerky Attack on Titan runs. it gets under your skin zurl.co/y45iA

I have a bad habit where if a workflow annoys me twice I start writing a tool for it. sometimes the tool takes longer than the workflow ever would. still feels correct.

i think the general rule is 3, but really, i just like procrastinating making tools

zurl.coDevlog 28 - A Soundtrack Direction and a Failed 3D TestThe soundtrack direction takes a big step forward, while AI 3D reconstruction proves much less useful for Jack than expected.

Devlog 28 I made Jackstrap a soundtrack: Nutcracker meets heavy chiptune — and it SLAPS. Then I asked AI to turn Jack into a 3D model. It had no idea who Jack is. Comedy gold, zero usable results. New devlog is up — come laugh at the AI's attempts. zurl.co/vxTzE

this is what Jackstrap's UI looked like a few months ago vs now. same game, but the UI finally looks like it belongs in the same sketchbook.

21 Sept

hand-drawing 8 directions sounded reasonable until every move needed 8 opinions.

20 Sept

spent basically all of yesterday not working because I had promised some friends I'd finish a poster for our association. side quest completed. main quest untouched.

18 Sept

I've been pretty quiet here for a while. already changing that. more game stuff, more tools, more half-finished experiments, and probably more opinions about software than anyone asked for.

18 Sept

Jackstrap is a hand-drawn arena survivor about protecting the family jewels from an army of nutcrackers. that sentence is also most of the design document. this is the first nutcracker enemy, learning to walk

18 Sept

before the Nutcracker Legion I tried urchins, porcupines, balls, road rollers... none of them really belonged to the same game. the nutcrackers did.

zurl.coDevlog 27 - More Directions, More EnemiesDirectional attack art, early enemy categories, engine fixes, and a useful combat reference from Final Fantasy XII.

17 Sept

devlog 27: more directions, more enemies. filled in missing attack art, pushed nutcracker variants until they started becoming actual enemy types, and fixed a bunch of annoying engine issues along the way. zurl.co/gysAY

zurl.coDevlog 26 - Movement Rules, Nutcracker Music, and Combat PolishMovement behavior, combat flow, enemy attack ideas, and the heavier Nutcracker-inspired music direction.

16 Sept

the nutcrackers are starting to infect more than just the enemy art. devlog 26: clearer movement roles, cleaner attack flow, new enemy behaviors, and a deep dive into heavier, weirder versions of tchaikovsky’s the nutcracker. zurl.co/jSuRd

oh, and those are screenshots of jackstrap's gamedev whiteboard. it scrolls down to infinity

Moochi Games - Jackstrap@moochi.bsky.social

I’ve been pretty bad at keeping up with social media while working on jackstrap. so I’m fixing that. from now on I’m going to make an effort to post regularly, like every day. reminders are set and I got a pretty big backlog of stuff I never shared. expect more jackstrap here.

Moochi Games - Jackstrap@moochi.bsky.social

I've shown Jack a lot, but not nearly enough of the other half of Jackstrap: the enemies. at this point, I think the Nutcrackers are just as important to the game's identity as Jack himself. so here's where they came from.

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a lot of the work has been figuring out how much personality I can squeeze into very small sprites. idle, run, attack, hit, death, direction changes... they need to read mechanically, but I also want them to look like angry little idiots while doing it.

there are currently around half a dozen enemy designs in the game, with a couple of them being variations. I'll show them properly one by one later. for now, this is the little army Jack has to deal with.

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I didn't want generic monsters that just happened to be chasing Jack. the enemies needed to belong to the same stupid little universe as everything else: slightly threatening, slightly ridiculous, and immediately understandable without much explanation.

so they became a family of Nutcrackers rather than one repeated enemy. different shapes, sizes and behaviors, but all clearly related. some are variations of the same basic idea. others push the silhouette and personality much further.

the basic idea was almost embarrassingly simple: you are Jackstrap. yes, the protective underwear.those are Nutcracker dolls. ...bad combination. once I had that, it felt like the whole universe had somewhere to go.

zurl.coDevlog 25 - Game Feel and Movement EffectsGame feel, attack polish, movement differentiation, and slide bonus ideas.

Devlog 25 - Game Feel and Movement Effects zurl.co/xrlfk

zurl.coDevlog 24 - Storyboarding the Jackstrap Promo VideoA more precise storyboard for a vertical gameplay-first Jackstrap promo video.

9 Sept

Early this summer I started storyboarding a short promo for Jackstrap. The goal: explain the stupid premise and the actual game in under a minute. This devlog is about figuring out the scenes, gameplay beats, and how to make the pitch actually clear. zurl.co/hQ9W6

moochi.gamesDevlog 23 - Explaining Jackstrap BetterA fake movie-poster experiment leads to a clearer plan for a Jackstrap explainer video.

8 Sept

Earlier this summer, I made a fake prestige movie poster for Jackstrap. It was fun. It also exposed a bigger problem: Jackstrap is easy to explain as a joke, but harder to explain as a game. So now I’m working on a proper explainer trailer. Devlog 23: zurl.co/iLoTS

31 Aug

End of summer feels like a good time for a quick Jackstrap refresher: Jackstrap is a hand-drawn arena survival game where Jack protects the Family Jewels from an increasingly deranged army of Nutcrackers. Move, build combos, survive. Very serious business.

30 Aug

Jack's test run animations vs current WIP assets

30 Aug

Building Jackstrap around a roughly 32-color palette, with #7D4BC3 as the star of the show. Limited enough to keep the art coherent, flexible enough that I don't have to fight the palette. Would you keep the palette tighter, or let it grow?

28 Aug

Gave the devlogs a little cleanup. Now has a two-column layout, with media and text side by side. Much easier to read and browse. Still deliberately simple, not trying to win awards with the website... I just want a place to document making the game. zurl.co/oFlGa