For the 2022 GMTK Game Jam – theme “Roll of the Dice” – our team created Roll with the Punches, a two-part game where you strategically assemble a training regimen from dice rolls and then test your skills in a high-stakes prizefight. I handled all art and some programming on a team of two developers and one musician.

Play on itch.io

Expanding on the cartoony art style I created for Pesadilla Hotel, I pared back hair and facial features to focus on creating a modular, animatable body.

As training modifies each body part (and stat) individually, the game combines art assets based on training results to form a skeletal rig at runtime.

Modular Body Parts

Each of the prizefight’s ten animations – a kick, punch, and guard each for high, middle, and low stances, plus a huge ragdoll when knocked out – maps automatically regardless of the composition of the player’s body. A buff chest with tiny arms; a squat torso with long legs; a gumball with massive biceps – it all works.

Building upon this system, I also handled the underlying system that manages game state, as well as the simple, weighty fighting mechanics for the prizefight. Shaders were my duty, too: I adapted and improved my squigglevision post-processing effect from our game c.a.l.e.b. to drive home the old-school cartoon effect.

Among more than 6,000 entries, the game was ranked in the 92nd percentile overall.