Watching Paint Dry, but Fun

The game in action
The player attacking some blobs
A swarm of enemies approaches
Upgrade choices

Inspiration

Upon hearing the theme "Make it fun" with the idea of taking something boring and mundane that people normally wouldn't want to do and making it fun, my mind immediately went to the most boring thing I could think of: watching paint dry. And of course, a great way to make something fun is by making a game out of it. This is where the inspiration for the game came from.

What it does

The game consists of the player, a fox inspired by the Hack KU 2026 mascot, who wields a paint brush, and must paint the ground. However, colorless blobs are attacking to try and stop them from doing so by absorbing the paint. You must survive waves of these enemies to not just watch the paint dry, but LET the paint dry before the blobs erase it. After each wave, you will get to choose a color swatch that acts as an upgrade, giving you either a passive bonus or an active skill, along with modifying your paint color.

How I built it

I made the game using GameMaker studio and the GML language. The game is focused around getting upgrades, which means the game needed quite a few of them. I wanted to allow the project to have as much scalability as possible, so I made a modular system that allowed for data driven upgrades. Rather than type out how each upgrade worked individually, I can store the information in a script through a data structure and add new upgrades without even needing to really write code.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge in the project was getting the upgrade system to work. The way I implemented it allowed for effects to have effects within effects, for example, a skill that creates a projectile could then create a damaging area when it is destroyed. I had to deal with recursing through the effects of any given upgrade and making sure they all triggered properly and without crashing the game.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The accomplishment that I am most proud of is the modular upgrade system. I have never made something like it before, and the scalability of it opens up so many possibilities. I am very proud of it. I also am proud of myself for doing this all within 36 hours all by myself.

What I learned

For this project, I wanted to expand my capabilities as a game developer, and I definitely did that. I learned a lot about making systems that are highly scalable, and techniques to make them work. I have some new tricks that I learned over the course of the Hackathon that will be helpful in future projects.

What's next for Watching Paint Dry, but Fun

The potential for this game is very high. The scalable upgrade system I have been raving about means I can add many more upgrades to the existing 15. I also have a lot of ideas of where I could take the game. I could definitely make it into a full game release rather than just a Hackathon project.