Before I made this game, I was playing around with making an endless platformer where the levels are randomly generated on a tilemap, just as a programming exercise. The game randomly decided how long each platform is, how high it is, and how far from the previous platform it is, as well as where the end goal would be. I never released it because I didn't know how to turn it into something more interesting. Perhaps I should release it anyways, just for the sake of having another completed project done.
In any case, when the 2023 GMTK Jam began and I saw the theme "Roles Reversed" I thought: Hey, why don't I make that game into something more interesting by making the player the level generator? And so Frantically Generated was made. It was rated as painfully average, which was better than expected. Over a year later, I finally decided to start improving the game using the criticism I received. I still plan on making further updates in the future.
This scene partially inspired the gameplay
For some reason, when I play for too long and look away, I still see things moving. I don't know how to make it so the game doesn't screw up my eyes, but in the meantime I've decided to slow down the movement of the background. I'm accepting suggestions.
This game is a walking simulator. It is a more serious version of a project called good video game, which was originally meant to be a shitpost full of stuff I thought was funny. I improvised the stuff I decided to include. As good video game's development progressed, I gradually incorporated more and more elements from the world I was gonna set a different project in. Eventually, since the other project was too ambitious for me alone to reasonably ever complete, I decided to fully combine both projects into what became S.A.T.T.M.Y.F.
I wanted the appeal of the game to be that, in lieu of actual gameplay mechanics, you just walk around looking at all the weird shit and collect things, like in Yume Nikki, which could be considered an inspiration.
However, unlike in Yume Nikki, which makes all of its weird shit conveniently accessible from a central Nexus, and which allows to explore any part of the game you want immediately, S.A.T.T.M.Y.F requires you to collect a certain number of collectibles before you can progress. Also, unlike in Yume Nikki, the collectibles are seemingly useless flowers instead of interesting effects.
Comic by hotdrpepper, who wrote some of the dialogue. They are very talented!
The reason I did things this way is that I wanted to force the player to explore the starting area of the game instead of just rushing past it. However, I now think that this was a bad move, because by artificially forcing players to stay in the same spot for a long time before getting to look at more weird shit, you turn exploration into a chore, and the weird shit becomes familiar, and therefore boring, the more time you spend looking at it.
This, combined with the fact that I hid a good chunk of the flowers in a mundane forest, means that most random players just stumbling across this game aren't gonna get very far. Certainly not far enough to find the boss battle at the end of the game, which is the only morsel of gameplay in the whole thing.
It doesn't help that the game just doesn't have that much material anyways. There are only two additional distinct worlds to explore once you get past the void with the background you see in this page. I didn't enjoy adding content to the game as much as programming what little actual interaction it had, which makes you wonder why I even tried making a game of this style in the first place. I didn't even do a good job with the coding, either!
This game's saving grace, in my opinion, is the music. Although all the samples suck because I didn't know how to get good samples on MilkyTracker, the actual compositions themselves are ones I am still proud of. The music in my music page is for the most part remakes of music in S.A.T.T.M.Y.F.
I plan on making a new version of S.A.T.T.M.Y.F which actually has gameplay. The original larger project that became S.A.T.T.M.Y.F was going to play as a top down shooter most of the time, but I feel like there's enough of those already, so the gimmick I want to explore in this new version of the game is that I want the weapon you have to often be useless by itself.
Instead, you use the weapon as means of altering enemy behavior and using that altered behavior against them. For example, I plan on adding a boss battle where you cannot directly hurt the boss at all. Instead, you use your weapon to redirect the fireballs it shoots at you. There's more to it than that, but that's the basic idea.