What is this?
A Murder of Crows was developed for a Game Jam hosted by my college. I put together a small team, including two talented artists: Rowan Magnier, who served as Lead Artist, and Shayna Rogers, who focused on animation. Together, we created a Survivors-like game inspired by 20 Minutes Till Dawn.
We selected Godot 4.5 as our development engine because I had experience with it, making it easier to prototype quickly. Additionally, Godot’s workflow was more approachable for our artists, allowing them to integrate their assets efficiently without struggling with engine complexity. This choice helped the team iterate faster and focus on building polished gameplay within the limited timeframe of the Game Jam.
GDN Design Challenge
The Game Development Network (GDN) club at SCAD hosted a longer-form Game Jam, giving students the opportunity to work on more polished projects over an extended period. The winner of the Jam would have their game displayed on the Game Design building's TVs, which highlighted SCAD's top student work.
The theme for this Jam was, “What is your favorite fun fact?” Our team chose the fun fact that a flock of crows is called a murder, which inspired both the game’s title and central theme. We also brainstormed including other bird flock names to expand the concept, but due to time constraints and scope, this idea was ultimately cut. This allowed us to focus the gameplay around the core theme of crows and their behavior.
Game Jam
Inspiration/Reference
20 Minutes Till Dawn served as the main inspiration for this game. I admired how it balances player control with varied gameplay, allowing players to feel both empowered and challenged. In this project, I aimed to capture that same sense of fluid, engaging combat while introducing our own mechanics and design elements to differentiate the game and make it unique.
20 Minutes Until Dawn
While Vampire Survivors is widely credited with popularizing the "Survivor-like" genre, I had never played it before beginning development on A Murder of Crows. About halfway through the project, I decided to check it out to see which mechanics and design choices had influenced 20 Minutes Till Dawn. This helped me understand the broader context of the genre and allowed me to incorporate similar pacing and gameplay variety in our own project, while still keeping our unique design vision.
Vampire Survivors
Design Breakdown
Early Game Art
Countdown Timer
20 Minutes Till Dawn creates dynamic gameplay using a countdown timer. At specific intervals, additional or different enemies spawn, altering the gameplay and increasing the challenge for the player.
These are the elements I felt were most important from 20 Minutes Till Dawn to include in A Murder of Crows.
In 20 Minutes Till Dawn, the game encourages players to dodge enemies as much as possible. Health is hit-based, rather than gradually ticking down over time like in Vampire Survivors. I like this approach because it emphasizes player skill more directly.
Health
Both 20 Minutes Till Dawn and Vampire Survivors use experience orbs dropped by enemies to increase the player’s level and make them more powerful. I found it very satisfying to quickly collect the orbs after clearing a large wave of enemies, and I wanted to retain that element in our game.
Exp Orbs
Upgrades
Creating an upgrade system was the most interesting feature I wanted to include in the game. I aimed to understand how to design upgrades that feel satisfying to use and can interact with one another to create meaningful synergies.
Prototype 1
I got the core gameplay loop working, including enemy spawning, a countdown timer affecting enemy spawns, player shooting, collecting experience, leveling up, and gaining upgrades.
I was initially concerned about implementing the upgrade system because I had never created one before, but it turned out to be easier than expected. Most upgrades came naturally from variables already present in the game, like player speed and fire rate. There were a few custom upgrades I added, such as a bullet fan for a shotgun and projectile penetration.
What was learned
At this stage, every time the player leveled up, a random upgrade was assigned. The same upgrade could stack multiple times, and players often did not know what they had received unless the effect was immediately obvious in-game.
Playtesting revealed that the upgrade system needed to feel more meaningful. One of my main goals for the next prototype was to allow the player to choose upgrades and to ensure that each upgrade has an immediate, noticeable impact.
Prototype 2
This marked the next stage of development for A Murder of Crows. With Prototype 2, I addressed many of the issues with game feel and added some of the missing features I had wanted, such as meaningful upgrades.
At this stage, the MVP gameplay was complete, allowing us to focus on polishing the game. We also created the first playable build, which is now available on itch.io as A Murder of Crows V0.1.
https://jokera249.itch.io/a-murder-of-crows
When thinking about upgrade design, I really like systems where every upgrade feels impactful, rather than systems that only provide small, barely noticeable stat boosts. 20 Minutes Till Dawn includes some of this, but the game that really inspired me was Hunt: Showdown 1889, which has a perk system where each upgrade feels meaningful when applied.
In 20 Minutes Till Dawn, they use mini upgrade trees that follow specific effect families, and I wanted to try something similar. For this, I created upgrade trees based on the upgrades I designed for Prototype 1.
During playtesting, I noticed that some upgrades were always stronger than others, making choices like knockback versus damage irrelevant. I decided that each upgrade should include a secondary stat to create more meaningful reasons to select it.
Upgrades
Experiment Phase
We began testing story and art elements. We initially planned to include a full story about A Murder of Crows, and I experimented with creating a town, as shown in the video, but we eventually cut this idea.
Another area of experimentation was how to implement art in an infinite world. To start, I studied how 20 Minutes Till Dawn and Vampire Survivors handled it, and they used tile-based systems.
Art in an Infinite World
I wanted to add subtle grass, and fortunately, Godot has a built-in tile manager. The problem is that tiles are usually placed by hand, but we needed them to be generated procedurally in an infinite world. My solution was to generate a grid around the player within a specific radius and loop through the tiles to check if they had already been filled. As the player moves, any unfilled tiles are generated during this check.
There is an example of the system producing unexpected results. I used text images with numbers to track what was spawning, and it accidentally created something visually interesting.
Visualizing the Game
At this point, it was difficult to visualize the intended art style for the game. We looked at references from different games, including Vampire Survivors and a game called Kill the Crows, for design inspiration. I noticed that these games included points of interest in the world that make players curious about what else might be there.
I asked my lead artist to create a fake screenshot of the game to help us visualize its potential look and serve as a guiding reference. This proved incredibly helpful for matching the art style and guiding the placement of procedurally generated objects.
Fake Screenshot
Real Screenshot
For the in-game objects, I maintained an array that was constantly checked. When an object attempted to spawn, it would first check whether there were any nearby objects in the array. If there was enough distance from other objects, it would spawn. To prevent the object count from getting out of hand, I also checked if objects were too far from the player and despawned them if necessary.
In the end, I feel that the system came close to the intended design, but we were under a time crunch and did not get it perfect.
Implementing Art
Final Crunch
On the last day, we worked intensely to get everything polished and ready. We added menus, title art, a brief tutorial, an upgrade screen, and an ending screen.
The final task completed was a trailer, which was finished in the last hour of the Game Jam.
Title Screen
Story Screen
Upgrade Screen
Ending Screen
Post Mortem
Although we did not win the Game Jam, the outcome was extremely close, and the experience was invaluable. Participating in the event taught me a great deal about rapid prototyping, team collaboration, and the importance of balancing gameplay, art, and technical systems. I left the project having grown significantly as a game developer.
There are several things I would change if I were to restart the project. One improvement would be implementing object pooling, since so many entities are spawned and removed rapidly. Object pooling would make more sense for performance.
For the art, I would also adjust some objects to spawn in clusters, which would make the environment feel more natural and cohesive.