How was the Purple Team formed and who was in that initial group?Kornelia Błażyńska, Purple Ray Studio’s art director and co-founder:
The original Purple Team consisted of me, Robert, Kuba, Łukasz and Marcin. Robert and I spotted the MegaJam while scrolling through social media and decided to reach out to Jakub, with whom we’d already taken part in a game jam before. We each have different backgrounds: I’m a 3D/environment artist, Jakub is a programmer, and Robert a level designer. We asked around if some friends with other skills would like to join us, which is how we got Łukasz (game designer) and Marcin (sound designer) involved. We had varied experiences with Unreal, so we were learning along the way from each other.
How did you come up with the original concept for the 2021 Epic MegaJam entry?
Błażyńska: The theme for the 2021 contest was “Running out of Space.” As we were brainstorming how to approach this theme, it suddenly dawned on us that “running out of space” could just be about disk space! Simple as that. But how could we visualize and gamify that?
As children, some of us used to imagine that devices like computers, TVs, and radios looked like miniature cities inside, with tiny robots moving stuff around them. When this concept came up during discussion, we quickly connected it with disk space in a computer, and there we had it: data in computers is managed by tiny robots moving it around! I started sketching some concepts for how the character doing such a task could look, and that’s how I got the first drafts of Boti.
As everyone agreed that this was a simple-but-good idea for the theme, we started figuring out the gameplay. All of us had really fond childhood memories of old-school platform games that were simple but lots of fun, and it seemed like a good idea to stick with those inspirations from childhood. So, we set about designing the basic loop of the game.
We couldn’t do regular, old-school platforming stuff like progression and such, so we came up with this arcade-ish mode in which players have to collect as many files as possible before the disk is overrun; the faster you collect, the longer you can play. It seemed simple enough to create in a week, and fun enough that someone might enjoy playing it.
How is the Epic MegaJam different from other game jams you’ve participated in?
Błażyńska: As I mentioned, Robert, Jakub, and I had previously taken part in a game jam together, and our other teammates had also tried doing some game jams before. I think the biggest difference we noticed from the outset was that the Epic MegaJam attracts a lot of amazing entries, like The Rat Way Home (which had a unique atmosphere) and Reclaym The Kingdom (with its brilliant animation style). Competition like this kinda made us feel like we had to step up our game and try to deliver the very best we could!
What impact did winning the 2021 Epic MegaJam have on the studio and the game?
Błażyńska: For us, it was the spark that ignited the idea of us embarking on a journey to set up our own indie dev studio. It gave us confidence that we could create something enjoyable and recognizable. As a team, we really liked how our jam game turned out; we had a lot of fun working on it, and we wanted to do something more with it–to turn it into a full game. So, we started to rebuild the prototype that used to be BotiBoi into what is now Boti: Byteland Overclocked.
Source: Unreal Engine Blog