Public Domain Game Jam '26 entry: Ultra Crush Siblings at 4:14 PM

He's holding a dooog!

 

So last year I tried making a fighting game for the Public Domain Game Jam. But sadly I got sick for a lot of it and  had a lot of computer  trouble...not that it was gonna turn out to be Tekken 8 or anything but I  didn't put out the performance I was hoping. 

 This year I wanted to make  something different. Out of my wheelhouse.

But five days into brainstorming I was like "fuck it, I'm running out of time" and just made a  fighting game again. And though I was also sick for a lot of it and also had some computer trouble, it was a lot less than before, and I turned out something that while not Tekken 9 or anything, I'm kinda proud of.

 

Ultra Crush Siblings. Get it.

 

 Now, this game's title is not to be confused with my long years go planned party fighter parody starring Xbox characters. I just spent too much time thinking what this one would be called and I wanted to name it another variation parody on Smash, but in the end I decided not to dwell on it and just call it that.

 In my brains I was thinking of making a beatemup first but then decided to basically make a Smash like game in a side scrolling beat em up format.  See I always struggled with making 2D platformers. I look at the foot sprite one pixel off of the platform and I go "THIS IS BULLSHIT AND YOU KNOW IT" and give up.  But  a side scroller, I think the physics of it are simpler. 

 

The theme I came up with for the game is, it's  one of those shirts with cartoon characters as "gangstas" made into a game. That would be the planned aesthetic. 

You know what I mean.

 

 I started coding and planning for the cast. One thing about it was I knew this needed music, and I know it would help with the theme of the jam (1930's media). I had made a playlist of music from  1930 taken from Wikipedia last year. I mean, I could have just put any of those songs  in here in whole. Or I could use a bunch of Creative Commons  music. I decided to try something. I went to Rave.DJ and made a mix of one public domain 1930's song and one creative commons tune. You can see the result here, unless too much time has passed.

I was like this is good...but could it be gooder? I took it to one of those websites that separate voice and instruments, and then I took the vocals to  a voice changer website. , then I put them back together.  The final result was good proof of concept.

 (incidentally that creative commons lounge was under a sharealike term of CC, which means I relinquish all control  over it.)

 And so I developed   at a steady clip, coding when I was at home,   frankensteining music together when I wasn't. One thing I wasn't doing was sprites. I knew sprites where going to take some time but I had a plan: Draw up every basic frame and then scan it,  repaint it in  Ibispaint  and  animate what I painted in Flipaclip. Then I  would render the entire thing in Shooshubi. I just made up that last thing  to make sure you're paying attention.

The point is it would be easy. I'd just be animating whenever not at home. But there was a problem. My tracing pad ( that I was gonna use to make more than one frame of the same animation happen)  got lost. I lost it. It's around here somewhere but time keeps moving. I decided to just  do the  hand drawings and...

soon I was 1 day down with literally not  a sprite. I was on day zero talking to my dad on the phone while scanning pages. I quickly (but not as quickly as I wanted to)  created a code that just replaces the default object sprite with a sprite named after the object  and the name of the characters, so all I'd have to do is make the sprites put them in the game and the game would take care of the rest.

 

I made sprites for 4 whole characters within the scaled back scope of the game. like 6 hours left. I made 2, then I was gonna take a break, but I was like "I'm just gonna start this one then take the break. "But I didn't. I just kept doing it.

 I sent all my files to the computer and started implementing them to the game and doing what I do with my placeholder sprites to get them to move: just kinda chunkilly grabbing parts of the sprite and moving them. 

Miyazaki has been real quiet since this dropped

 

 I got up to 3 characters, the game still had a bunch of  debug options on that I wanted to turn off  before shipping and only 18 minutes left. I made the choice not to implement the sprites for Freckles Marvel and instead focus on getting this thing out the door. I felt something  stupid could happen  that would delay me uploading the game.

 So I went to upload and Itch.io was like "You can't upload this without confirming your Email" and didn't even show me how to do that or where. I had to look  it up myself.  I was like here it is, the bullshit I was waiting for.

 But somehow against all odds I made it  just before deadline, at 2:50 in the morning. 

 

 And it's not exactly getting no Nintendo  Seals of Approval, even after I went back an hour ago and worked Freckles back in and got the Hitboxes outta the way.  But it's a videogame. You can play it front to back and there's no soft locking going on, I think.

 

But what is the game? Well here let me show you the first recording I did after wrestling with OBS and then giving up and getting a diffrent screen recorder. 

 The game is a 4 way brawler. The more you attack your opponent the farther they  will fly, but also  after 100% damage they will die anyway

 You have your choice of  Popeye The Sailor Man, Betty, Pooh and Freckles You can choose between a handful of keyboard configs and also  2 joysticks if you happen to have them. 4 players battle to decide who gets to stay alive. I have made it so if Joysticks are present it defaults to them because.

 

So far it's multiplayer only. I didn't even consider adding CPU. Are ya nuts? You saw I wrote here? was making the game until I didn't have half an hour left! I knew I couldn't cook  so I didn't even try.

  

 

 

The game is free but you can donate. And why wouldn't you? Don't you love me?  

 

Now I will keep working on the game if all goes well.  I planned and started sketching for  the following characters:

Mickey Mouse

Turok ( who has recently been found to be public domain)

Jenny Everywhere

The Wicked Witch of the West 

Blue Bolt

Golden Bat 

Mimi from Metal and Lace: Battle of the Robobabes, which is NOT public domain but on more of an Orphan Work.

I also began considering Debbie Benton but I was already done sketching at that point and there obviously wasn't time for that at all.

  I never got real far planning stages. Like at all. But I also never intended for the battles to only take place in the one room. I'll have to mock up some. 

The controller hints at the existence of a block button. Sorry I never got around to implementing that. I wanted at least that, and air attack and a divekick . The idea was you could block but if the other player got on the other side they could knock you out of it so a divekick  would get you there. And there would be some pick ups, maybe some weapons. 

Some of these features might make it to the final game.  I will certainly try to .

 See you on the other side.