I am president of my university’s game development student organization. This past weekend, we hosted a 48-hour game jam with the theme of “Against All Odds.” To be completely honest, I had a game idea before going into the game jam: Car Car Saves Christmas.
One of the very first video games series that I played was the Putt-Putt series. If you are unfamiliar, Putt-Putt is a purple car that goes on many different adventures ranging from joining a parade to traveling through time. Putt-Putt is a point and click adventure game with many things to point and click at.
I never really make parody or funny game projects, so this game jam, I decided to change that. Car Car Saves Christmas is about Carburetor Carl (Car Car) saving Christmas by reuniting his divorced parents. In order to do this, Car Car hatches a plan to obtain gifts for each parent, but say that they’re from each other rather then himself.
Creating a point and click system was fun, but I also tried my hand at creating some sprites for the game. I am by no means a professional, but I think they work. My buddy Cameron Schrader did a fantastic job with the environments, both artistically and from a story perspective (moving boxes in Car Car’s mother’s house, a glowing fire in an alley to signal that there is an event there, stuff like that).
I also had to make a story, and with the story came voice lines. Car Car saves Christmas is a completely voice acted game, and it was a blast recording lines with my friends. Ian Cooper voices the titular car, and I don’t think there could be a more perfect casting.
Making a parody/funny game was so enjoyable that I might do it again for another game jam. Who knows? Maybe Car Car has more adventures to discover…
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