Jump Climber

Inspiration

I'm fascinated by games with an extremely high skill ceiling. You might call them "rage games," but I think of them as hardcore single players. Games where the only thing standing in your way from finishing them is your own dedication and patience. I also love watching speedrunners tear a game apart, and I wanted to create a world that top level runners would devour.

What it does

Jump Climber brings the challenge of Get To Work or Only Up to the Meta Horizons ecosystem. Obbys have long been a popular genre on similar platforms, and taking that space to a challenging extreme both starts conversations and fosters friendly competition.

Building

The goal of Jump Climber was to create as much gameplay content in as quick a turnaround time as possible. 98% of development time was spent on level design, with a little bit of scripting added to add a little variety to the core gameplay patterns. In games with such demanding skill expectations, a little bit of breathing room is a highly worthwhile and meaningful reward.

Scripting features I did implement were used repeatedly, primarily in the form of trampolines and boats. These are integral parts of the level design’s progression aesthetic, and adding more than running + basic jumping helps set Jump Climber apart from other similar obbys.

Challenges

Creating distinct sections in the game using only stock assets was one of my primary concerns. I wanted the game to have distinct landmarks as you climb to make progression tangible and communicable. As new assets were added on a weekly basis, I had to take stock of what objects fit thematically with which sections and assign them spaces accordingly. The few objects that are repeated through the game all serve as grounding elements that reinforce common game mechanics.

Moreso than adding assets to the world and asking players to jump up them, I also wanted to create sections that felt like their own self-contained puzzles. These sections should prompt players to pace their decisions a little bit and apply some maze solving strategies in the middle of what would otherwise be a matter of simple execution.

Crafting a smooth difficulty progression also posed some challenges that required constant iteration. Rage games such as this carry the expectation of intense difficulty and brutal punishments for failure, but this element needs ramping up over time. Players need to have reasonable expectations set from the start to hook them. Otherwise, they’ll write it off as beyond their skill level and move on. A steady progression that slowly ramps up the challenge should retain much better than starting and staying at level 99.

Accomplishments

After only a short two weeks of development, I managed to create a minimum of 20 minutes minimum of gameplay. Granted, it’s only 20 minutes if you play it absolutely perfectly the first time, which certainly won’t be the case. And beyond the initial playthrough, implicitly embedded in the game is a space where players can challenge their friends.

Learnings

As an introduction to the Meta Horizons creator ecosystem, this project was an edifying crash course in the platform’s powerful capabilities and robust creator ecosystem. Seeing how quickly new assets were added to the library gave me lots of hope that an Aleph 0 degree of infinite object configurations could be combined into an Aleph 1 degree of infinite gameplay possibilities. I frequently referenced the embedded TypeScript LLM to gain inspiration on how to solve certain problems, and Jump Climber is a much more robust and quality project as a result.

What's next for Jump Climber

Assuming some initial success and popularity, there are lots of features I would love to add. More level design of course, but also achievements and race features. I’ll give players more direct features to incentivize racing, like a stopwatch, leaderboard, and 1v1 races.