The Sandbox Game Jam — Beast Quest was a competition with a prize fund of 100,000 $SAND to reward the creators
Tentango's game, "Holy King's Sword" placed within the top 10 of all submissions for the beast quest game jam.
Get inspired by good games instead of starting from scratch
Find mechanics you already like from good games
Understand the essence of the IP and incorporate it into the game
Leverage someone else’s expertise and focus on your strengths
The team saw that there were many 3rd person RPG-styled games in previous Sandbox game jams and wanted to create something different to stand out.
The first game they thought of was Archero, a successful mobile game where the player is in control of an archer slaying monsters.
One limitation of Game Maker is that a projectile attack system isn’t developed yet, but characters can easily avoid obstacles. This prompted the team to pivot towards a level-based puzzle game inspired by “Lara Croft Go”.
The key essence of the Beast Quest IP is to go on a quest which inspired us to work on our storytelling muscle and introduce a story for the game.
Within the first 2 days, we figured out what each level map would look like. Then, they moved on to brainstorm and test different puzzle mechanics such as arrow projectile traps and a bomb that blows up a section of the wall.
We hired a level designer on UpWork to design levels on a spreadsheet. That worked out really well.
The key to the success in this Game Jam was due diligence done on IP, planning and Sandbox building expertise.