Brackeys Game Jam 2026.1 – Day 1 Progress
I’m officially participating in a game jam.
Not just thinking about it. Not planning for the next one. Not watching from the sidelines.
Actually participating.
The theme?
🏕️ Strange Places 🏕️
When it was revealed, I felt that familiar spark - the rush of ideas, the excitement of possibility, and, if I’m being honest, the quiet danger of over-scoping something wildly ambitious.
So before I even opened Godot, I made a decision.
This jam is about finishing something small.
No sprawling systems. No feature creep. No “this would be cool if...” spirals.
Just one idea. Executed properly.
Early Brainstorming – What “Strange Places” Meant To Me
When I first saw the theme, my brain did what it always does - it sprinted in ten different directions at once.
Not every idea was practical. Not every idea was smart. But every one of them helped shape what this project would eventually become.
1. The Campsite That Isn’t Yours
One of my earliest ideas was deceptively simple: a single, static view of a campsite.
The camera wouldn’t move. The world wouldn’t scroll. Instead, the player would observe.
Each in-game “day,” something would subtly change.
A log slightly out of place. A tent rope missing. A shadow that wasn’t there before.
You would have to spot the differences. Identify what didn’t belong. Notice the slow erosion of normalcy.
The goal was to create that deeply unsettling feeling of:
“This is your campsite... but it isn’t.”
It would’ve been a strange blend of:
- Spot the Difference
- Where’s Waldo
- Slow-burning environmental horror
The place wouldn’t move. It would change.
I loved the psychological angle - but I started to worry it leaned too heavily into passive observation. I wanted movement. I wanted tension. I wanted the player to walk into something wrong.
2. Exit 8–Inspired Anomaly Hunting
From there, my thoughts drifted toward games like Exit 8 - walking through a looping, familiar space and trying to detect what’s off.
That got me imagining:
- A store that slowly becomes unfamiliar.
- A corridor that subtly mutates.
- An abandoned building that rearranges itself.
The concept of something mundane gradually slipping into the uncanny was incredibly appealing. There’s something powerful about recognising a space and then slowly realising you no longer understand it.
But again, I found myself gravitating toward pattern recognition over embodied exploration.
I didn’t want the player to just notice the strange place.
I wanted them to enter it.
3. Pokémon Platinum – The Distortion World
Then a memory surfaced.
The first time I encountered the Distortion World in Pokémon Platinum.
Walls became ground. Gravity didn’t behave. Perspective betrayed expectation.
At the time, it felt completely alien - not just visually strange, but mechanically unfamiliar. It was the first time I experienced a space that obeyed different rules.
That idea stayed with me:
A place that looks familiar... but operates differently.
A place that contradicts itself.
4. Forest Horror & Dual Realities
Eventually, the ideas started merging.
A forest. Something lurking just beyond perception. A second layer of reality existing over the first.
I had recently rewatched Stranger Things from Season 1, and that “other side” aesthetic was very much living rent-free in my brain. The Upside Down - not just as a monster factory, but as a mirrored, corrupted reflection of something ordinary - fascinated me.
At the same time, I thought about Life Is Strange, one of my favourite game series, and how powerful it feels when the player can use an ability on demand. Not passively. Not randomly. Intentionally.
The idea of choosing when to access the strange place felt right.
And then I stumbled across a film titled “The Trail Ends Here”, written and directed by Vinnie Pagano. A story about someone hiking, coping with loss, slowly realising she’s being followed.
That title stuck with me.
A trail that ends. But doesn’t.
That contradiction felt like the purest expression of the theme.
Where It All Landed
Instead of building a static anomaly-spotting experience or recreating a full distortion world, I landed somewhere in between.
A 2D side-scrolling forest.
A wooden sign that reads:
TRAIL ENDS HERE
And yet, the path continues.
Only in another version of reality.
The corrupted world isn’t just a visual filter. It’s not a palette swap. It’s a contradiction layered over the normal world - geometry that exists in one space but not the other.
The place itself is wrong.
And something exists in the layer behind it.
That, to me, feels like a truly strange place.
The Concept – Where The Trail Ends
The game is a 2D side-scrolling platformer built in Godot 4.6.
You play as a teenager following a forest trail that doesn’t appear on any map. When you reach a sign clearly stating that the trail ends, the ground continues anyway - but only if you shift into another version of the world.
The core mechanic is simple:
- Press a button to swap between the normal world and a corrupted world.
- Some platforms only exist in one version.
- Progress requires shifting between realities at the right time.
No combat. No inventory. No unnecessary systems.
Just traversal, tension, and place-based horror.
Day 1 – Foundation Work
Day 1 wasn’t glamorous.
There were no spooky sound effects. No dramatic lighting passes. No cinematic reveals.
It was about stability.
Because if the foundations aren’t solid, everything built on top of them collapses.
Player Movement
I implemented:
- Side-scrolling movement using
CharacterBody2D - Jump physics with tuned gravity
- Camera follow
- Fixes for ghosting and jitter by:
- Setting the Camera Process Callback to Physics
- Enabling Pixel Snap
- Carefully adjusting smoothing
There’s something deeply satisfying about movement that just feels right. When running and jumping becomes intuitive, you stop thinking about controls - and that’s when immersion becomes possible.
For me, that was a big win.
Two World System
The heart of this game is the world swap mechanic.
I set up:
TileMap_NormalTileMap_Corrupted- Separate physics layers for each
- Collision mask switching on the player
Swapping now:
- Toggles visibility
- Switches collision masks
- Allows interaction with geometry unique to each world
My proof-of-concept moment?
A floating platform that exists only in the corrupted world.
In the normal world, you fall straight through it.
In the corrupted world, you land.
The first time that worked correctly, it felt like the game truly existed.
Visual Direction
Because I’m using 16x16 pixel art tiles and targeting web export, I made a conscious time-saving decision.
Instead of redesigning an entirely separate corrupted tileset, I applied a warm, hellish tint to the corrupted world’s root node using Modulate. The player remains unaffected, ensuring clarity while the environment shifts tone.
The result is subtle but effective. The corrupted world feels oppressive and wrong - not because every tile changed, but because the atmosphere did.
For a jam with limited hours, that feels like the right call.
The Opening Moment
The game begins beside a sign that reads:
TRAIL ENDS HERE
There’s no cutscene. No text box. No dramatic zoom.
Just a contradiction.
The ground continues past the sign - until you reach a small gap. In the normal world, you fall. In the corrupted world, the path exists.
The mechanic teaches itself.
And the player realises:
The trail doesn’t end. It just exists somewhere else.
Lessons from Day 1
- Build foundations before atmosphere.
- Make the mechanic stable before building content.
- Pixel art + web export requires early technical setup.
- Scope discipline is a design skill.
I didn’t build anything flashy.
But I built something solid.
And that’s exactly what this jam is about.
Day 2 Goals
Tomorrow, the real shape of the game begins.
- Greybox the entire level from start to finish.
- Keep playtime tight (around 5–10 minutes).
- Introduce 2–3 swap-based traversal sections.
- Add one small vertical moment (a fallen tree or ledge).
- Create a final clearing to use for the ending.
Still no enemy. Still no heavy horror pass. Still no polish.
Just structure.
This is the first time I’ve approached a jam with restraint instead of ambition.
And honestly? It feels good.