After a month of work, @[email protected], @[email protected], Seabass (@[email protected]) and I have just about completed our game for the 2026 Queer Communist Game Jam. We think it is going to be a hit. We still have about 24 hours to fix things, so let us know how you do.
The Game: https://hexbear-games-collective.itch.io/mecha-john-brown
The Jam: https://itch.io/jam/queercomgames2026
I recommend playing with a controller (this works, even in the web version), but a keyboard will work as well.
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We made a thing! Also massive thanks to Porkroll who overcame so many technical hurdles to get this working on web (and just their technical knowledge in general), Seabass for their incredible music (the end credit music being my favourite and also just being something they had lying around), and Broodian for being an unstoppable content machine and for laughing at my shit jokes in discord!
Time to do a Joey Steel Metal Slug clone…
You guys worked like crazy! I’m just glad you liked my music :)
It was exceptional
Oh, a quick comment because I feel like we ought to give some credit where it’s due: the game is made in the Godot engine, which I love personally
Cool project!!
Some small issues I noticed, if that’s still helpful:
-after dying the game switched me to the fire pillar weapon, but the UI didn’t show its ammo bar (switching weapons fixes things)
-Mecha George Washington killed me twice in very cheap ways
Once he used his big laser attack right near the start of the fight and the blocks to dodge it never spawned. Then he used his dash move into me right as I was about to defeat him. I was frozen and he was standing in me during his death animation which repeatedly hurt me and we both died 
Once he used his big laser attack right near the start of the fight and the blocks to dodge it never spawned.
So sorry Comrade, I thought I worked out that bug
No worries! Thank all of you so much for making such a cool game!
I’m not surprised a complicated boss like that could produce a whole bunch of issues, especially looking at the image PorkrollPosadist posted
The ending was definitely worth beating that cheating George Washington!
The weapon issue on respawn is fixed. George Washington bot is going to take a little longer. He’s very complicated
He’s very complicated
That might be a bit modest
Hoooo boy. Yeah I ain’t touching that
platforming engine 1 day
level design 1 day
moving platforms 1 week
boss fight 3 weeks
menus 45 minutes before submission time
Lowkey we went a little bit overboard on the platforming engine. We created a system of “rooms” and “portals” which allow the level designer to link together as many Godot scenes as they want. All the rooms get loaded outside of the scene tree, they are scanned for portals, the rooms linked by those portals get loaded, and so on. Rooms are swapped in and out of the tree as the player transits through portals. The checkpoint loading/saving is also built on top of this architecture, duplicating a room when it is entered, and replacing the original with the duplicate when the player dies.
It is nearly suitable for a metroidvania, but we discovered a handful of bugs with Godot’s node duplication behavior which make it very fragile in practice. On the other hand, no reset logic needs to be implement on any of the entities. You can leave a room and return to it exactly as you left it. If you die in a room the second time you entered it, the enemies you’ve killed the first time will still be dead. This technique is not really documented anywhere. It seems like
Node.duplicate()was only intended for use in editor tooling.The final game ended up being pretty linear, after all that, lmao. I think there’s only one location where it is even possible to backtrack.
This is so cool.
Thank you!!
ooooh, very megaman! played a couple minutes, was pretty fun, i’ll see if i can finish it when i get some time :D
i’m going to miss my retinas :(
i just get “A password is required to view this page” when I follow the url. it asks me “Do you know who you are downloading from?” and warns me about download scams lol. would love to try it tho
Shit. I guess I accidentally flipped the switch when I was updating the text. It’s fixed now.
The password was beanis tho.
i even tried guessing some passwords! tried “hexbear” and “stalin” “lenin” and a few others even “death2america”. should have known it would be beanis, smdh. thank you!
For what it was worth, I tried this on a Google Stadia controller (yeah i still have one) and the controls were all out of wack. I switched to a PS controller and they seemed to be okay.
You can remap the controls. I’d be interested to know if it works after a remap
Im gonna download it on a handheld and run it through gamenative so I can play it while traveling next weekend. Thanks for posting and congrats on the release! Cant wait to give it a go!
Does it require a second stick/can i play with an arcade stick
Input is mostly A+B+D-Pad, with left and right bumper (re-assignable) to switch weapons
I’ve got 8 buttons (+2 for start/select) and a stick that’s perfect I’ll give it a go when i get some time
Can I skip the intro?
I’m sorry I’m not very good at games I cannot get past the first hallway because I can’t time my jumps with shooting the super blaster thing to hit the auto cannons :(
If you stand underneath the turrets when you fire the launch blaster, the central projectile (that fires off the submunitions) will hit the turret and destroy it in one.
it only rolls before the title screen the first time the game is played. After this, it is skippable
For some reason it triggered again while I was in the options menu
Oh lmao
It runs on a timer as an attract screen and the timer doesn’t check if a menu is open
I was too slow learning the controls fml smdh lololol
Should be fixed now. Thanks for sharing.
hell yeah
only issue i had was some spot-loading the first time i hit something with the firebomb/rocket weapons and again when washington kicked it, i assume it was loading their explosion effects
Yeah, that needs some work. I think I know the problem
good effort… but the competition looks pretty tuff
