Last weekend I participated in the STL Scatterjam 2015 with Malcolm Pierce and musician Sarah Wahoff. Scatterjams are a type of game jam that started in St Louis last year. Teams are encouraged to form up long before the jam begins, thereby skipping the awkward phase of most game jams in which teams are hastily formed amongst strangers. While it’s still good to try working with new people during a jam, for a Scatterjam you have more time to reach out to other members of your community and ensure the team you form is a good fit. Group festivities are only at the beginning and end of the jam; while working on games, teams can scatter as they please to work at home or elsewhere.

The theme was “connections.”

It’s a broad theme that can encompass almost anything, so my team had a hard time deciding what sort of game to make at first. We drank beers and threw some ideas onto a white board. But as soon as Malcolm said, “What if you’re a vampire detective…” we knew we were on to something fun.

We decided to use RPG Maker like last year, and Malcolm is the RPG Maker expert, so he got to building the environment while I sat down and started drawing. We decided to put all of our assets through a specific color pallet, so that the tiles that come packaged with RPG Maker would have a fresh look. Sarah started composing some melodies, and we all dove deeply into the work.

On the second day of the jam I took a short break from drawing to try collaborating with Sarah on music. I haven’t had many chances to collaborate with other musicians, so I really enjoyed rearranging one of her melodies into a new piece. You can hear the song we made together in the game, and a little clip of it at the end of the trailer.

Finally, I asked David Dixon if he had any interest in throwing his voice talent into the mix, because I’ve really enjoyed working with him on projects like the Serafina’s Saga animation and Serafina’s Crown. My team and and I tried to voice the rest of the cast with our own humble VA efforts (and less than ideal recording setup).

By the end of the game jam, we had this!

It has some pretty rough edges like anything that comes out of a game jam (and a few of the art assets may be a little familiar :p), but altogether I’m proud of our little dark comedy. There’s about 20-30 minutes of playable content altogether, including alternate endings.

Download it free from itch.io!

If you give it a try, I hope you enjoy it!