5 Minute Mushrooms

Keyboard: WASD/Enter/Ctrl

To stop the world from becoming mostly fungi, you try to stop your father’s experiment from infecting everyone. You only have your trusty trimmers from past ancestors. You have to move precisely around the edge to keep these infectious mushrooms in their place. Do you have what it takes to stop this from happening?

Just a little bit about us and why we decided to participate in this game jam. This game was made by my 13-year-old son and myself as a collaborative project. A few years back I started an in-home art studio as a way not only to pursue something I felt I had been ashamed to commit to but something I felt should have intrinsic value to the world, being an artist. I have dabbled in many mediums and wanted to create a space to grow those skills and perhaps turn it into a career. Most importantly though beyond all that, I wanted to create a future for my son that didn't include a grind under the wheel of corporate indentured servitude, and let his skill sets flourish in a different kind of environment. All that brings us here, we have done several projects in the past including starting a YouTube channel for miniature tabletop gaming, a streaming venture several commission jobs in various mediums, and now game design. We have learned things from video editing, sound design, making music, SFX, VO, visual effects and so much more in just a few years. And when he said he wanted to make a game I figured starting somewhere small like this would be a perfect fit. So after two weeks of brainstorming, working through challenges, learning new skills, and both pushing ourselves in our respective ways I could not be more proud to have completed these projects together.  

The game was entirely coded by him in Game Maker Studio, he provided all the music that he made in Ableton and even did his folley work for SFX. I did all the artwork including in-game sprites, animations, and cover art. We struggled to land on a mechanic we felt fit the theme "It's Spreading" that would be easy enough to code yet still provide a fun game experience. A ton of decisions were born from challenges that arose in that process. Speaking for myself, I have never done animation or designed sprites. For my son, he expressed frustration early on with the "spreading" mechanic. We took some headspace, thought about it, and used the community discord to bounce ideas around until we found a solution. The whole experience was awesome and we will likely be back in 6 months for another one.