Siegeturtle is launched!

What a crazy week! I decided to take part in the GMTK 2025 Jam. This is not my first jam, but is my first for GMTK.

The theme was LOOP. And I came up with a few ideas:

1) Idle Basketball

An idle game where a ball loops on screen. Each time it passes a hoop, you earn money. Use money to buy more balls, or build more hoops. Over time, you can build more loops, creating a loop-ception.

This idea is pretty fun, but I didn't find it extendable enough. It's perfect for a jam, but I kinda want to push myself to create a game that can scale if needed.

2) Train Upgrader

I love trains, so maybe a train game where you have to pick as many passengers as possible. Combined with the 'snake' game mechanic, where you have to keep going in circles to collect upgrades for your train. More capacity, more speed, more money per passenger.

I really loved this idea and if it weren't for Siegeturtle, I'd make this.

Siegeturtle Concept & Process

Ultimately, I've always wanted to make a game about turtles. I really love turtles and I thought I'd impose this random restriction on myself this jam, since I get to spare time to make a fresh idea. I also have always created games about people, so why not animal characters for a change?

Why I picked an idle incremental genre?

1. I felt idle incremental games fit the 'LOOP' thing perfectly - being known for its rebirth mechanics where you restart over and over to get stronger. 

2. All my game ideas for this jam leaned toward idle. And being inspired is extremely important to motivate me to make a game.

3. I recently played an idle game so I have inspiration and familiarity with its game design.

Thus, I settled on an idle game. I also love roguelites so I wanted to make a game where you have to travel as far as possible, and each restart makes you go further.

v0.1 - Attributes & Equipment

The first thing I worked on was the attributes. That was easy. But what wasn't easy was the equipment and RNG system that I was building for the equipment system later. Thankfully I had some experience in this making an RPG in the past. Otherwise this would've taken forever. I always wanted to do a barebones RNG (random number generated) rarity system and this is my first game to officially do so. Even if I cannot get the equipment system working, that's fine as the attributes are the core loop.

It was definitely challenging, with balancing ending up causing more headaches than expected. However, the mechanics came together faster than I thought, so I was very pleased the prototype was very quickly playable.

v0.2 - Companions

The other key part of this game I wanted was the companions. I needed this game to have multiple animals. I did an MVP of it and I almost had to scrap parts of it because the buff system was taking too long to work. In the worst case scenario, I would fallback to them just giving passive abilities, which are more boring but serviceable for a jam. There are some parts of the companions that do not fully work as intended, but you likely won't notice them unless you are super hardcore. Thus, I did not prioritize fixing those for the jam. But I will fix those after the jam.

At this point, the genre didn't go fully as planned - I wanted it to be more roguelite and less idle, but somehow during prototyping, it just kept steering into the idle route. I tried to make the game loop faster so you'd 'respawn' more often and get upgrades quicker, but it's not easily achievable just by increasing numbers. I did my best but decided to go with the flow, rather than overthink it.

v0.3 - Skills

The core of the game revolves around upgrades. So I began working on the upgrade tree next.

v0.4 - Jetpack

This was totally unplanned, but when I started working with the VFX, I ended up really loving this skill. I think there is something nice about breezing through early zones and just killing everything in the way. Look at that loot raining from the heavens!

It makes for an awesome looking GIF too.

v0.5 - Equipment

My development process is a very iterative one. I do small quick patches to ensure a playable build all the time. Every day, I would ship multiple versions. However, there was one update that didn't adhere. One of my most intense updates was v0.5 - which focused on equipment. 

I was going to ship this update at the end of one of the days before I went to bed, but I ended up spending the entire night and the whole of next afternoon on it. This was the build I first released to playtesters and so I wanted it to be quite perfect.

One thing that bothered me was equipment in typical RPGs not made for turtles. I decided to just poke fun at this concept in the game.

v0.6 - Boss Dungeons

On the last lap, I added a boss summoning mechanic. I thought it was pretty neat to just make it give a bunch of overpowered rewards as the game began to slow down after 100 meters.

v0.7 - Game Ending + Heartwarming message

Every jam game needs a satisfying ending. Even if this is a technically endless incremental game, the game should have an ending so I quickly whipped together a satisfying scene. Coming from an art background I wanted to try to make a nice composition and scenery that displays all the companions. I also really wanted a wholesome message. 

I wanted to say how the journey is the process, rather than the ending - because in my game development journey, I met so many awesome friends who played my games and became part of my community.

Siegeturtle isn't my first game. I had created Havendock, my passion project. Stormbridge, born from a real life stormy experience in my game-dev journey. And then Last Fuse, born from the last Brackeys Game Jam 2025. I also made friends across jams I participated.

Without all these people, the journey would have been very lonely and very tough.

v0.8 - UI Animations and Buff VFX (Because I love rainbows)

I then added polish:

• Sound effects when you tap, upgrade
• Glorious UI animations when windows are opened.

Lastly, each companion's buff was also given a unique VFX:

• Seal gives you a protective shield. (Defense)
• Unicorn gives you a rainbow. (Attack)
• Dolphin gives you a blessing. (HP and MP Regeneration)
• Goldfish gives you a fairy. (Gold Gain)

v0.9 - Objectives for better UX

I added tutorials and improved the UX to guide new players. This was one of the last priorities but since I had some time (technically, I did not as I took it out of sleep unfortunately, but I was on a roll), I decided to do it.

The added advantage is that I get to give rewards, which makes the early game progress much faster as I found it boring. The rewards code is pretty hacky, and I will improve this with a proper rewards system after the jam.

v0.10 - Balancing - Added 'Fast Mode' for testing, only for it to became permanent

Thanks to xXDeath420Xx, he played my game pretty rigorously, and contributed largely to the v0.10.0 update. He broke  a bunch of stuff in my game by getting super overpowered, I dedicated an entire update just to stabilizing it.

The game has detailed patch notes so I know what changed across versions. I also added a mode to make the game much quicker to progress, called Fast Mode. It ended up being the default game mode because I left the boolean permanently on.

v0.11 - More VFX, polishing

I love skyboxes and lighting. I made the main menu change as you play. I know it's a random thing to do for a jam, but I make games because it's fun, and doing little things like these, it's fun. A jam doesn't change that.

I also added auras to bosses to differentiate them from normal monsters.

At this point, I also started creating the visual assets, GIFs and cinematic shots for the trailer, which I try to do every game jam, but only at the end. It's an emergency buffer that can be spent on development if time falls short.

Steam?

This was a pretty intense jam. For the first time I slept less than 4 hours on several days. I remember this moment where I stayed up till 6am to make this prototype art, because I wondered the possibility of this game going on Steam. I'm not sure yet though, but I did have a huge blast making it!

Future Plans

There was so much I wanted to do in this game, and I managed to achieve most of it, but not all. I added a fishing rod equipment, but no fishing system. It was meant to be a secondary loop but had to be scrapped to prioritize balancing the main game loop. I also have some great feedback from a player, which I will work on at the end of the jam and a long rest.

I plan to update this game after the jam, with a Fishing System, as well as character customization, along with more content. Purple turtle with pink cannon FTW :D