Game Builder Garage 2nd Anniversary! [Featured Player Creations]

The second game on our list is Apple Inc, which is inspired by the Rolling World trailer game. There’s no rolling world in this one, however, instead focusing its attention on that curious apple tree instead.

The aim of the game is to buy and sell apples, which can be found in trees, on the floor, or inside the stomachs of wild creatures.

It’s a cute little idea, and some small secrets and puzzles have been added too, but it is clear that the game is in prototype status. The store is seemingly irrelevant as you can sell anywhere in the world, and one of the puzzles is basically considered moot due to being able to jump inside the building it opens due to the low walls and lack of roof.

I like the basic idea though, and I think adding shop functionality, and perhaps an actual rolling world with things scattered around it would make it a really neat game.

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The first thing that caught my eye with Neon Node City Chase was just how stunning it looked. The original clip was already beautiful, and seemed to hint at some kind of first person adventure. This one expands the city and turns it into a racing title of sorts.

Sitting in the driving seat of a surprisingly normal car, you need to chase some strange futuristic craft as it fires upon you. It goes along a set route, indicated by the arrows scattered around, but you’re free to explore and find the all important ammo boxes for your cannon. Armed with bombs, you’re then able to fire and cause damage to the other craft.

Sounds easy? Well, it ain’t! The opposing vehicle fires a non-stop stream of shrapnel as well as some larger bombs to try and destroy your craft. Try as I might, I was never able to take it down without dying myself first. It’s a great idea though, even if it is incredibly brutal!

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Well, this one ended up being rather unexpected. The trailer game of the same name shows a ghostly hero fighting a fire-breathing demon on a 2D plane. This game, however, opts to transform that into 3D – complete with a cute little pair of ghostly boxing mitts.

The goal is to summon the demon, and then punch the heck out of him before he kills you with his fire. There’s an overwhelming amount of fire, but the game is surprisingly very lenient with how much damage you can take, thus allowing me to beat it on my first attempt.

Overall, it’s a nice subversion of expectations that I rather enjoyed. 

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Despite enjoying all the games from the Game Jam, this creation really is something else. Using the Shadow Graph trailer game, Zert transforms it into something way more than anyone could have imagined. 

What starts out as a simple 2D platformer set in the shadows soon becomes something far more, and the short length of the game means that you’re still in shock by the time you reach the game’s finale. I don’t want to say anything more as this is one you should really experience instead of watching my playthrough, but all I’ll say is that this is easily my favourite game from the competition and may even be one of my favourite GBG creations ever.

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One of the more unusually titled games from the trailer was Frog Flip, which featured a backflipping frog. It was a trailer game that I hoped would happen, and here we have a pretty much perfect interpretation of it.

The main goal of the game is to follow the button prompts to successfully backflip, else you’ll lose points. A simple idea based on the trailer, but it’s all the little touches that make the game. The different colour variants you can choose from, the difficulty selection, the high score screen, and of course the cute animation as you flick through your choices. I’d even go as far as to say that the pre-game menu is better than the game itself!

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To wrap up our initial batch of celebrations, we have a couple of cake levels – but both play rather differently. First up we have Voxy’s creation which is a nice little memory game.

As the game starts, the little anime girl creates a cake that you then have to memorise and recreate as best as you can within the time limit. After your attempt, she will then score you based on how close you were.

It works really well, and the visuals are absolutely spectacular. It’s honestly faultless as a minigame and I could imagine it featured in something like Mario Party. The only real issue is that it doesn’t seem to randomise the components, resulting in the same pattern every time. Considering how much polish has gone into the rest of the game, the randomisation really just seems to be a casualty of being part of a Game Jam.

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And to wrap things up, we have the talented jJae and her Aka’s Cake Shop creation, which uses the same trailer game as Voxy but plays quite differently.

Instead of memorisation, you instead need to design your own cake! The controls aren’t quite intuitive at first, as you need to navigate the menu with the d-pad and select with A, causing the item to drop automatically where the hand cursor is at the time. I was rather expecting a select and place approach, which lead to some initial confusion; however, once I got to grips with it, making a cake became a – well, a cakewalk.

There’s the cream, strawberries, and biscuits from the original trailer game, but she has also added icing and even marshmallows to spice things up a little. It’s a cute idea for the anniversary and a really fitting way to end this list. Even if my final cake looked like a piece of crap.

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