Quick Info

Click to play on Itch.io

Platform: Windows

Duration: 48 hours

Team Size: 5

Role:

• Level Designer
• Puzzle Designer
• Lead Audio

Signs of Forest

Overview

Signs of Forest is a top-down action adventure game submitted for the 2026 Global Game Jam. My four friends and I took the challenge of creating a game in 48 hours centered around the theme “mask.”

In Signs of Forest, you play as Kachau, a warrior of a tribe, who must retrieve the three ancient Beast Masks to save the planet from dying. Each of the Beast Masks has their own unique ability to help the player in their journey. I was responsible for the level design, puzzle design, as well as music and sound effects.

Despite the game being riddled with bugs, this was a great opportunity for all of us to learn about scope. In the future, my friends and I agreed that for the next game jam, we will focus on having one exceptionally explored mechanic rather than multiple. Additionally, we agreed that a narrative should only be developed if the game jam goes on for a full week, at least.

Design

For the game jam, I focused my attention on creating the level design layout as well as designing the puzzles of the second temple. Because our game was heavily inspired by the HM mechanics found in Pokemon, I designed the puzzles so that they seemed like they could easily exist in an old Pokemon game.

Audio

When making the music for Signs of Forest, I focused on creating a song that is played everywhere in the game’s level, but its instruments and structure slightly change based on the environment that the player is in. Because of that, the overworld, bear temple, eagle temple, and serpent temple theme are all nearly identical, aside from some changes to the chord progressions and melodies.

After creating the four themes, I quickly created a main menu theme. Inspired by Deltarune’s “The Legend”, I wanted the main menu theme to feel like it’s telling a melancholic story to the player.

Sound effects were created following similar methods used by sound designers during the 16-bit era. For example, the dash sound effect is simply a white noise with a pitch shifter and delay.