The Fat Hand: Mini Jam Release

I recently joined Mini Jam 88: Rush and made a game about a dinosaur having to rush his way to the office toilet, which follows the jam’s theme of Rush! In its path, there are many obstacles and humans, which you need to ask to give way via a cute little punch. The game jam actually has a limitation where no text is allowed, so I had to get creative and make an animation of the dinosaur having a little tummy ache to tell the story and objective. I modeled the dinosaur in Blender, textured and animated it by myself.

I also refrained from using UI in the main screen because of the no-text limitation, and opted for a physical volume slider which the dinosaur can push with its fat hand! The mouse controls the hand directly to punch and push objects. There is then a button on the floor to step on to start the game. I wanted to implement more 3D objects as menu controls, but didn’t have the time to do so as the jam only lasted 3 days.

The aesthetics and energy were inspired by games like A Hat in Time. I wanted to make it adorable and happy, giving lots of leeway in terms of the time-limit to complete the level because I want to impart a sense of chaotic joy rather than tension and stress. I believe there is still a challenge, so I made a quick suicide button so the player can restart immediately.

Sadly I only managed to make two levels for the jam, but you actually get a finished pizza in the main menu for completing the kitchen level! I hope these little touches add to the charm of the game and make it all the more enjoyable.

In future, I hope to fully flesh out this game with different levels telling cute stories via animation and cutscenes. I’m really loving the no-text limitation which forced me to think of creative ways to do storytelling. As for game mechanics, I plan to add the ability to grab and jump for basic platforming to open up more interactions with the physics-based puzzles. Then, I might try to implement multiplayer! If you like this sort of game, please feel free to suggest stuff I should add to the roadmap! The code is open source (GPLv3), made with Godot, and the game is free to play, so go ahead and give it a try and be sure to follow me to get more updates of… THE FAT HAND!