Tindeath: the Arneo game under 13 Kb!

What is the JS13K?

The JS13K is an exciting challenge for developers and designers from all over the world: to take part in this Game Jam, you have to design a featherweight game (no more than 13 Kilobytes) while maintaining an understandable and enjoyable gaming experience for players. This year, the tone was set, and the theme imposed: death.

Here's how we went about it.

Tindeath, gameplay inspired by Tinder

Tindeath is the Tinder of the afterlife. Determine which souls will make it to Heaven, and reject fake profiles by swiping.

We've taken existing codes that are familiar to most potential players: most of them have already used Tinder and know the swipe gesture to accept or reject a profile. By relying on the usage habits of future players, we've significantly reduced the time it takes to learn the game.

Relentless focus on performance

Faced with the weight and storage limitations of in-game assets, we had to be creative and inventive to design a qualitative gaming experience. We therefore applied a logic of frugality to find the balance between lightness, usability and aesthetics.

Before creating the graphic elements and when creating the screens, we determined which were necessary for Tindeath's playability.

A few tips:

• Choose the .svg format for images. A lightweight vector format, it can be enlarged ad infinitum with no loss of quality, and can be modified with code. A single beard can be customized in multiple colors using code.
• Select only system fonts. Stored on most devices (windows/mac/linux computer, tablet, mobile...), their use means you don't have to integrate fonts into the game.
• Use emojis. They provide visual information without the need to add text or images.
• Work on your texts with UX Writing. This involves minimizing text length without losing clarity.
• Building assets to save lines of code. Here, all the character's components are in an image the size of the box containing them, so as not to have to code their position. By default, they will be placed at the top left of the photo.
• Reuse as many elements as possible. Our background is made up of just 4 elements, duplicated and modified using code!
• Eliminate unnecessary .svg code at the beginning of files.

A design system for 12 million characters

Cleverness and creativity are essential to this challenge. To offer the most personalized gaming experience possible, we've devised a system to maximize character creation possibilities, while limiting the number of elements and their weight.

With a character design system that mirrors the workings of many character and avatar editors - such as The Sims - we offer almost 12,348,000 possible combinations. This design system has enabled us to bypass the weight constraints imposed by JS13K, by offering almost infinite variations of characters.

Discover Tindeath's design system here

AI to create our images

Tindeath was an opportunity for us to test new creative processes. To create the game's background skins, we used an AI capable of generating images from a query.

Where we would have spent 1 to 2 hours creating a single illustration, the AI generated 4 in 60 seconds, which served asinspiration for the background image. This is a valuable asset for design teams on certain projects, freeing up time for other phases of reflection and design.

Close collaboration between designers and developers

The success of this type of challenge relies on designers and developers working hand in hand, and on regular exchanges to share our progress, questions and adapt the game's user experience.

This collaborative approach allows everyone to move in the same direction, saving precious time and focusing our energy on the project. Speaking of which...

A creative process in line with Arneo's eco-design approach

Arneo is accustomed to designing projects with a view to reducing their impact, and therefore their weight. For the JS13K, we turned the problem on its head, aiming to make the game lighter rather than to save energy. But the result is the same: a lightweight, high-performance game with a fluid gameplay experience consumes little energy in storage, loading and use.

By making Tindeath as light as possible, we have indirectly responded to the eco-design challenges we regularly address for our customers. In the end, eco-design was our natural response to the weight issue raised by JS13K.

To conclude...

Let's end with the question on everyone's lips: how much does our game weigh? Tindeath weighs in at 12.7 Kb. Objective achieved!

The JS13K is proof that it is entirely possible to encapsulate a qualitative user experience in a compact format, while limiting its environmental impact. To achieve this, designers and developers need to work as a close-knit team, employing best practices in eco-design. Innovation and creativity are invaluable tools that have enabled us to take our approach even further.

Tindeath has been a fantastic playground and learning ground for exercising our creativity and ingenuity. The range of solutions we deployed will be very useful for our future projects at Arneo.

We loved this challenge, and we're ready to do it all over again for you!

Would you like to try Tindeath? 👉 https://js13kgames.com/entries/tindeath