The G.N.A.W. Protocol
I’m here to kick ass and eat cheese… and I’m all outta cheese.
The G.N.A.W. Protocol was made in 7 days for the Brackey’s Game Jam 2025.2. The Jam’s theme was “Risk it for the biscuit”.
The Jam: I Love the Smell of Cheese in the Morning
After making Crumbania and having a pretty good time with it, I was itching to do another jam. Despite planning to participate in it, the August GWJ had already finished, so I figured I’d find a different jam to do. I searched around on itch, and saw the Brackey’s jam, which I had heard of but knew little about. I still know little about it, to be fair. I had been chatting with QuenchedDisorder (A.K.A. Gopher), who I had worked with before, and he said he was interested in doing a jam with me soon, so he joined up. I figured I should find an artist as well, and saw NyxieBitsySpider (A.K.A. Nyx) had posted in the Brackey’s jam community that she was looking for a team.
Despite me having a bad experience with it before, we all came in with a bit of a notion of what we wanted to make. I was curious about exploring a 3D game idea, Gopher had mentioned to me he wanted to do something Cyberpunk-y, and Nyx had shown me some of her work, which was cyberpunk-adjacent.
The Theme: Risk It for the Biscuit
Like some other jams, this one had a vote for the theme. Some of the options were “weird instruments”, “a special backpack”, and “uncharted territory”, all excellent themes. This jam could have had a really cool theme, but no. “Risk it for the biscuit” won. Honestly, this takes the cake for worst theme of any jam I’ve participated in, hell, worst jam theme anyone I know has participated in. “Risk” would have been a better theme. Hell, I would have preferred “biscuit” over this. “Risk it for the biscuit” is a bad theme, and I don’t think I need to explain why, but I will anyway:
- It’s an idiom, which narrows the scope of possible interpretation.
- It’s an English idiom, and a less common one at that. A lot of people needed it explained to them what this even means.
- It means to risk something for a potential reward… so couldn’t the theme just be “risk”?
- Even then, risk is like a core part of game design. Like, in some way you could argue nearly every game has “risk” in it, thus you are “risking it for the biscuit” in pretty much every game.
I don’t like this theme, and I think that shows in the game that came out the other end. We pretty much ignored it, despite some of the concepts being rooted in the theme.
The Plan, Part 1: The Mouse Is in the House
The jam starts at 6AM on a Sunday. So by the time Nyx and I are up at around 9AM, the brainstorming starts. Immediately we jump on thinking of “biscuit” in the British sense, A.K.A. a cookie. From here, Nyx suggests that you’re a kid trying to sneak around and get a cookie from your mom. Then I suggest, instead of a kid, you’re an ant. Then Nyx suggests a mouse instead, since that’s easier to draw (fair enough).
So a mouse trying to steal cookies. Pretty tame so far. But what about those cyberpunk vibes we discussed? Alright, what if you’re a hacker mouse or something, and instead of physical cookies it’s browser cookies… or something. We cycle through different types of games, from a typing game to a platformer, until we land on a 3D game idea.
It would be similar to DOOM or Wolfenstein 3D, a pseudo-3D style. You’d be in a box and enemies would spawn around you (to avoid having to design levels). Then at the end of each round (similar to Tiny Rogues), you’d pick one of a handful of items to power yourself up. We’d also include a bunch of stuff from that era of games, like the DOOM-style HUD, and Duke Nukem-style quips.
The Work, Part 1: Curiosity Killed the Cat. No Wait, That Was Me
As the main programmer, I fired up the ol’ Godot Engine, and whipped up a quick 3D scene. I took an old 3D character controller from a failed idea from a previous jam and turned it into a 1st-person controller. I slapped in Nyx’s test tiles, including a basic enemy and…
Yeah, this wasn’t doing it for me. It’s very loud, very busy, very disorienting. I liked the sprites but they weren’t working in 3D. Not to mention, I was noticing that, no matter what I did, working in 3D was just taking so much longer than anything in 2D. Considering that the concept also worked in top-down 2D, at the start of the second day of the jam, I decided that we should switch gears.
The Plan, Part 2: I’m Putting You Cats Back in the Bag
Now, the game would be sort of a cross between Hotline Miami and Tiny Rogues, a top-down fighter within a single arena, after which you would receive your choice of item. Some might call it “lazy”, or say that I “chickened out” of making a 3D game, but hey, it’s what I know. Not to mention, this was a short jam, the shortest jam I’ve ever done, and committing to 3D was just too much for me, especially with the other obstacle in my way…
The Work, Part 2: Easy Cheesy
I get started that second day working on getting the baseline 2D controls together, stealing some code from Crumbania. By Monday night, we had a respectable start to a 2D game. I probably could have done some more that day, but for whatever reason I just wasn’t feeling it.
And then I played Hollow Knight until 3AM, and suddenly it was clear to me why my heart wasn’t in this game. So on Tuesday, I do some light work just to clean some things up, but mainly I make the decision to take the day off and focus on Hollow Knight. My brain was clearly more interested in that than this game, and I figured the best way to get myself to focus on this game was to remove all other distractions, namely by finishing Hollow Knight.
Which I did. 104%, skipped Godmaster and The Grimm Troupe, but aside from that did everything else. By Wednesday morning I was feeling more invested in the game, and found myself actually enjoying working on it for the first time.
Wednesday and Thursday, I’m in my groove, I’m adding enemies, adding enemy spawning (with code stolen from LaRtOoD), adding item pick ups (most of which don’t do anything), and just generally getting the flow of the gameplay down. Also, we now have items and a fully animated mouse, thanks to Nyx’s great sprite work.
Also on Thursday, I recorded the voice lines used in the game, which was a real treat. We all pitched in ideas for voice lines, and I did my best Duke Nukem impression (not good). I think they came out alright, but if we had more time I probably would have redone some of them. If you’ve read this far and want to hear more of my voice for whatever reason, go to the game page, run it, and click on my name in the credits on the main menu, there’s a little treat waiting for you there :)
Friday morning, Gopher posts the main track for the game. Similar to his previous music, I was blown away by what he was able to do with such little time. I was worried that it was, at least in the beginning, a bit subdued for such an action-focused game. All concern melted away once he put it in the game later on, it’s a phenomenal track, one of his best.
For me, Friday is smooth, but stressful, mostly focused on UI and polish. Nyx sent over some more assets, including the concept for the main menu, as well as the ultimately scrapped final boss.
Friday night, Gopher adds in the audio code, as well as linking up some options and adding the music and sound effects.
Saturday, the last full day of the jam, Nyx informs us that she’s fallen ill. Unfortunate, to say the least, especially with how much there is left to do. The main menu was unfinished (but close), and we had a bunch of items still to draw. I had to take over this, but thankfully had Nyx’s templates to work off of.
From there, I got onto making the items actually do something, including coding the grenade. Then onto making the enemies actually interesting to fight, including adding movement and shooting patterns. Then I added 7 variants of enemies, during which I ran into an engine bug that slowed progress. However, after the jam, I was able to track down what was happening and make an MRP for the bug. Then from there, I took Nyx’s main menu WIP, finished it up, and added it to the game.
With Saturday over for me, and the jam ending early Sunday morning, I handed it off to Gopher to bring it home. And holy shit did he bring it home. He updated the sound effects from my notes (making the shooting louder, the damage crunchier, adding the Mario Paint meow). He added a timer and a wave counter. He rebalanced the game? He added a dash?? He added a new mechanic that actually tied in with the theme??? Who the hell is this guy???? Gopher? More like GOATpher.
He submits the game to the jam, and all is well. With Hollow Knight: Silksong coming out just a few days later, I figured I might as well get in and play some submissions ASAP.
The Results: I’m In
Honestly, I probably should have played more submissions. With 2300(!) submissions though, it felt like any effort I put towards rating games was a drop in the bucket. I only wound up rating 24 games, and honestly, there weren’t that many games that stood out. Cookie Flicker, made by Tallbeard Studios, A.K.A. Abstraction A.K.A. the guy whose public domain music I used for Crumbania, was pretty cool. Biscuit Tapper had a fun twist but ran poorly. Wait, It’s All Biscuits? was probably the most fun game I played. But my favorite has to go to the enigmatic, strange, and surprisingly funny visual novel The 2200 Thought Experiment.
As for the official results, it was a long wait, a 2 week long rating period, which is crazy for a 1 week long jam, but I digress. The G.N.A.W. Protocol, for whatever reason, was rated #1 in gameplay. How the actual hell did that happen? With other strong scores in audio (#23) and enjoyment (#28), overall we placed #70, just under top 3%. What an actually insane result, like, waaaay better than I expected.
However, you may find that the game was not mentioned in any of the announcements regarding the winners of categories. This is because we only had 13 ratings, far less than the required 20 to qualify. To be fair, this was mentioned in numerous places, and I should have paid more attention to that… but I’m still salty. Just a bit.
The Post-Jam Update: What? Mouse Got Your Tongue?
During the rating period, we noticed a couple of small bugs, including the firing audio not always playing, the item tooltips not displaying correctly, and the health bar being a bit off of the actual value. These were all quick fixes we did during the rating period, but the small post-jam update is only just now being released alongside this post.
The Lessons: I’m Running Out of Ways To Skin These Cats
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Read the fine print.
20 ratings. I know how to get ratings, it’s not that hard. I just didn’t read the part about needing 20. And yeah, we might have lost the category when getting more ratings, but clearly people were enjoying it, so maybe not. We’ll never know.
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If I want to make a game, I need to be in the mood to make a game.
I mean this is common sense, right? It should be, at least. Hell, I wrote a similar lesson for The Tower of Babel: “Being distracted means you are unmotivated.” I guess sometimes it’s hard to know if you are or will be in the mood for something like making a game. It’s a hard thing to do, and for me, I need full time dedication to the project, or else I feel like I might as well not do it. Am I being too hard on myself? Yeah, probably. But, maybe that’s just how I work.
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Make friends who do cool shit. Keep them close.
This game wouldn’t have been half as good if it wasn’t for the encouragement and assistance from my team members. Gopher, Nyx, you’re both awesome, keep doing what you’re doing.
What’s Next?: Hasta La CHEESEta, Baby
Hollow Knight: Silksong is what’s next. I played it quite a bit, not even close to 100%, but at least got an ending. But as far as jams, I signed up for NOISE JAM, and I’ll post how that goes once it’s over. But in the mean time, I made another game, Project: Kardashev (no blogpost yet, WIP).