Every year since 2014, Degica hosts the Indie Game Maker Contest (a.k.a. igmc2017), which is… well, a contest, where both new and seasoned devs do their best to create a game in under a month.

We took part in both the first 2014 and 2015 editions, where we won respectively the third prize with Little Briar Rose and the Best Platformer award with Oh! I’m Getting taller. In 2016 the IGMC had a one-year pause, but the competition was ready to return this year, in October.

Everyone who has created any kind of software for a school project, or a game during a jam, knows the struggle of turning their lives upside down for a – not so – limited amount of time and give it all for the project to be the best it can be. This includes lack of sleep, neglecting family duties, not petting dogs, taking a shower very rarely.

Our October wasn’t much different. From the pre-production phase to the actual prototyping, not to talk about the release, “crunch time from midnight to 5 am and then ready to go to work” became our standard.

Making games in such a tiny timespan is not only about the negative stuff, though. For instance, there are no bettebug fixingforge friendships than nighttime bug fixing with your mates. To be a part of this huge creative community, to create all together something that people really enjoy, just this overcomes the back pain, depression and suicidal tendencies tied to narrow delivery times.

But what did you create during the last month, then, you’d ask?

Here it is!

Journey to the East.

It’s a one hour-ish long RPG, where we tried to create a turn/rhythm-based combat system. Characters attack by following specific music patterns, and players have to repeat them for the attack to be effective. The story is set in ancient China in a world shared by monkeys, led by Son Wukong, and humans, whose kindness was seen as the ultimate evil to defeat.

You can find the game here:

We’d be honored to read, hear and listen to everyone’s feedback, as they are very useful to us in order to understand what’s best for our games and our users.