Herringen was developed in 96h by a team of 7 for the GMTK Game Jam 2024. The theme was 'Built to Scale', that's where we got the idea of a small plane destroying a hulking superstructure.

In Herringen, the player controls the pitch and roll of the plane. They can drop bombs to damage the fortress. They can perform evades to gain iframes. A successful evades grants a massive speed boost and ends the bombs' long cooldown. Players are invited to take risk and boost into enemy fire to get more offensive opportunities.

The fortress was designed to be interesting to navigate onto and inside with towering obstacles and tempting tight passages. The player can fly between buildings to gain partial cover from attacks but will need to be more precise with their manoeuvres.

The game uses a lot of big punchy texts, explosions and slow-mo, absurd FOVs and meaty sound effects. We tried to make it as satisfying as we possibly could.

Finally, we wanted the atmosphere and environment to add a tinge of texture and subtlety to this explosion-driven game. As a result the rusty fortress is stranded in the rain, surrounded by an endless sea of water/clouds(?). The whole landscape has unusual and poetic colours, giving it an endearing and uncertain quality. It might as well be a distant world. The CRT filter, low resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio also played a huge part in giving the game a strong identity in a very short time, while also complementing its arcade gameplay.

My Role

During this jam, I contributed to game design and visuals.

I worked on designing the controller and the camera, making sure they felt good and were interesting to use. I also established the main gameplay loop.

Additionally, I designed the visual aspect of the game. More specifically, the plane, the general shape of the fortress, the environment and the colour palette. I also created the interfaces and took care of the visual effects and juiciness.

Matthieu Alle