Before the first take
Director’s Cut, a five-year Fab collection, and the decision to put the player inside the action.
The theme was Director’s Cut. My first question was not what an action movie would look like as a game. It was what would happen if the player could be both the person in the action and the person who gets to change it.
I spent the preparation period after the announcement working through the design document. The jam’s build window began at 10:00 PM on November 11, Edmonton time. This entry covers that starting point: an idea and a plan, before the later iterations made it into the game.
A failed take should give you an idea
I love SUPERHOT and its gameplay style. The relationship between your movement and the passage of time turns an encounter into something you can read, consider, and then act on. That was the starting inspiration, rather than a reason to stop at the same mechanic.
SUPERHOT itself began as a 7 Day FPS game-jam project in 2013. That connection felt particularly appropriate while preparing for another jam. Its team tells that history in the SUPERHOT press kit.
For Cut To Action, I wanted failure to open another possibility. Call cut. Look at the frozen set. Remove an obstacle, move something that changes the encounter, or restore something you need. Then shoot the scene again. The player is solving the action by directing it.
Why I chose VR
VR was an unusual choice for this jam, but it was the only way I could put the player in the action in the way I imagined. I wanted a scene around you, objects within reach, and decisions made with your body and hands. Watching an action hero and being the person standing on their mark are very different experiences.
That choice also made the problem harder. An idea on paper does not tell me whether reaching, aiming, or interacting with the scene will feel right. Those questions need actual play, not just a successful build.
Why the 5.9 preview mattered to me
Unreal Engine 5.9’s MegaJam preview unlocked more of the modeling and layout features for my workflow. It also opened up the massive Fab asset library I have been building over the past five years. That meant I could approach the jam with existing materials to work from, and spend more of my attention on arranging the scene and making the game’s idea work.
That is my experience of the tools, not a benchmark or a claim that every part of development became automatic. Epic’s preview announcement describes expanded editor scripting and MCP toolsets, including Fab-library access. The preview also comes with rough edges; the diary will include those when they affect the work.
A design, not a finished feature list
The November 11 document was the starting point. The later design revision changed the ending condition, removed stick locomotion, and expanded the combat, feedback, and post-production ambitions. I am keeping that distinction here: those changes belong to the development story, not to a claim that I had everything settled on the first night.
The first practical goal was one complete loop: action, failure, an edit, and a better take. If that did not work, a larger film would not make it work.
Next: build the alley encounter and find out whether editing a failed take is as interesting to play as it sounds on paper.
