Overview
The game “A Tractor Attractor” was developed over the course of a weekend during the “Semester Games Jam” in the winter semester 2017/2018. The topic of the game jam was “Attraction“, so our team decided to go with a split screen racing game with a twist: The car (a tractor) moves automatically, but can be influenced by a attraction ray (a tractor beam). Both players also had the ability to switch to the opposing screen and annoy the other player by dragging their car into obstacles.
This was my first game jam and I was responsible for controls and the camera system, both of which was complimented for being intuitive and well thought out. My goal was to create a system that allowed the players to easily switch screen sides, while playing like a traditional split screen game when not trying to influence the other player. This worked well for the most part, even though we noticed during the rating process, that most players did not know side switching was even possible.
Impressions
Final Words
With this being my first ever game jam, the result was surprisingly good. Our team of 6 meshed very well and had a good separation of tasks, everybody was busy but not overly so. The final game worked well, was fun to play and definitely had replay value, and there even was a small competitive scene during the rating process.
The game was designed for PC and is available for download below, both keyboard and controller input works. There may be some bugs and newer controllers may not work, only Xbox 360 controllers were tested. The game can also be found on GitHub!