Drop Dead Anchor

2026 CiGA Game Jam, the largest offline 48-hour Game Jam event in the Chinese-speaking region, organized by the Chinese Independent Game Alliance (CiGA). It was held from July 3rd to 5th, 2026, covering 12 cities across the country and 25 offline sites. Over 2,000 developers formed 600 teams, completing more than 500 playable demos with core gameplay within 48 hours.

This was my first time participating in a competition. As the team’s art director, I independently completed all the visual design work. In terms of characters, I designed the images of four animal pirates; in UI, I completed the entire process of interface setup from the main menu to the in-game HUD; in addition, I was responsible for the production of key objects such as the hooks and anchor points in the scenes, ensuring the overall art style was unified.

The Game Jam theme was “Anchor”. Since the concept is abstract and hard to build into a full gameplay loop within 48 hours, we went with its literal meaning: a ship’s anchor. We built the core mechanic around swinging from anchor points, inspired by Spider-Man’s web-swinging and the ODM gear from Attack on Titan. Our team enjoyed casual party games, so we settled on a local-network multiplayer battle game. Anchors shaped the pirate setting, and we designed four animal pirate captains — cat, rat, monkey and parrot — tied to pirate imagery.

For art, I chose pixel art. It is efficient and keeps styles consistent across many character animations. I made idle, movement, attack and death animations to deliver clear feedback during fast-paced fights. The tone balances lighthearted visuals with tension, drawing dark-humour inspiration from Edmund McMillen’s The Binding of Isaac and Cat’s Combination. I also designed all UI screens, including room creation, character selection, in-game HUD and result menus.

DROP DEAD ANCHOR is a local-network party battle game for up to four players. One player hosts a room with their IPv4 address, and others join by entering this host IP. Set aboard the pirate ship Pearl, four animal pirates fight until only one survivor claims the title of legendary pirate.

Players pick their animal pirate characters before the host launches the match. Every character has 5 HP and unique ranged weapons, attack patterns and damage values. Players grapple onto anchor points to swing quickly around the map and ambush rivals. Hits drain opponents’ HP; a player dies at zero HP, granting points to their attacker. Environmental traps also deal damage. The playable zone shrinks over time, hurting anyone outside it. A round ends when one player remains. There are three rounds with distinct maps, and final rankings are decided by total kill points.

The gameplay prioritizes fast-paced, chaotic player sabotage. It works well for casual local gatherings.

I took charge of all art assets for this Game Jam, covering character design, animations, UI and scene props. My first concept was tiny fruit-shaped characters inspired by Follow-Up Boomerang, yet they felt mismatched with the pirate-and-anchor theme. I reworked the design into mischievous pirate cats, drawing dark humour references from Cat’s Combination to fit the competitive PVP sabotage gameplay. The roster grew to four animal pirates: cat, rat, monkey and parrot. Each had four animation sets: idle, walk, attack and death. Even in pixel art, smooth animations were essential for responsive PVP feedback.

I built the full UI flow, including lobby creation, character selection, in-game HUD and result screens. Scenes mainly consisted of simple assets like decks and anchors. Since this project focused heavily on gameplay with almost no story, the art did not carry heavy thematic expression. Once the pixel art style was locked, the work became asset production. The main challenge was the large volume of character animations; I had to balance consistent feel and clear visual feedback for all four characters under tight time limits.

This was my first Game Jam, and it revealed plenty of shortcomings. Our biggest hurdle was that none of us were familiar with the Godot engine. I had little experience making game animations and initially prepared GIFs, which could not be imported directly. I had to split them into separate frames for the programmers, a very tedious process that slowed development. I also used a rough, unstandardized workflow. I used to draw only for myself and never considered how easy my assets would be for others to implement, so constant revisions were needed.

I also badly underestimated the workload and timeline. I thought all character animations could be finished within two days, but fatigue gradually dragged down our efficiency. We barely hit the deadline. Tiredness also reduced communication in the late phase. My assets ended up looking different from the original vision, not because the art was flawed, but because we lacked final checks and alignment.

This experience taught me that game development relies heavily on consistent communication and syncing between team members. All these technical and workflow troubles boiled down to inexperience — a genuine takeaway from my first Game Jam.