[01] The jam is over!

Man, for a jam we literally got the most time ever to work with, this was probably the hardest one on me physically.

I started college again for the first time in 4 years a couple weeks ago and put everything on hold over the past 3 days to try to whip up something that's a little bit of everything that I like. The Odyssey of the Nine is (/would/will be?) an amalgamation, of Etrian Odyssey-like dungeon crawling and exploration, SNES Final Fantasy ATB combat, and, well, Touhou!

I didn't get started until this past Friday, so it's really... really rough around the edges. I mean, to the point that I did a WHOLE BUNCH of system work and data assembly and other, not-game but game-adjacent programming first and failed to get the basic battle back-and-forth put together in time for the jam window (Submitted with 22 seconds to spare, baby!) 

Call me crazy, but in spite of that, it feels, vaguely... viable? The scope of dungeon crawlers is very naturally curtailed by the format of the genre, and some extra scope reductions that I've done make it even more bite-sized than usual:

• There are (currently) only five party members
• Each member has a selection of Spell Cards (with power ranks that they can have invested in) at their disposal, but can only take three at a time into battle
• The entire game (so far) exists entirely within the dungeons - there's no hub to speak of

This in mind.. I totally, totally could have assembled a few hours worth of content within just the jam period, IF I didn't get around to starting on the 6th, and instead, on the first day. It still wouldn't have been very pretty to look at, but the gameplay would've been there. Hell, I was 20 minutes away from getting attacks and spell usage implemented in time for the jam. You live and you learn, right?

Anyway, I'll have a more complete experience posted in a matter of days. I have to return my focus to college for right this moment. Also, Celeste: Farewell. I've been waiting for this, man.

- Taizen