This is an overview of my entry for the JS13k competition in 2019. The aim of the competition is to build a browser-based game in under 13kb of compressed source code.

Big Fish is a game about eating fish that are smaller than you, and avoiding bigger ones, to eventually become the biggest fish in the pond.

I created this game in 3 days, because I discovered JS13k 3 days before the competition was over. I'm glad I still participated though, as it kept me laser-focused on getting the game completed.

Reflections

The gameplay was a bit of a disaster because the controls accelerate way too fast. I got a lot of feedback about this from players after I submitted it. This issue was compounded by the fact that the feeling of acceleration depends on the current frame rate, so players had inconsistent experiences with it.

This was an amateur mistake, but I overlooked it because the controls felt fine on my machine as I was developing it, and with only 3 days to work on this, I overlooked testing it across devices. This was also my first time making a game!

In the future, I would have the velocity delta be calculated based on the time that the player presses one of the arrow keys, rather than the number of frames. Also, adding a speed limit would have improved gameplay.

Outcome

Ranking:

• Overall: 126 / 245

Not a great outcome, but not the worst either. Ultimately, what was so important about this experience was that it got me interested in game development and made me a part of the JS13k community. Plus, it was a blast.