Challenge
- The jam theme was Reefs and Rainforests. We wanted to say something real with it instead of using it as a pretty backdrop.
Case Study
Bear and Weevil VS Evil
Bear and Weevil are napping on their Floating Rainforest Island when EvCo, an evil corporation, turns up to build a massive data center. It's up to them to stop it!
Play on itch.io
🏆 1st Place Grand Prize · Indie Game Jam 2026
Games for Change Student Jam 2026, hosted by Magic Rain
✦
Bear and Weevil VS Evil
Quick Facts
- My roles
- Game Designer, Level Designer, Narrative Designer & UI/UX Designer
- Timeline
- 7 days
- Jam theme
- Reefs and Rainforests
- Event
- Indie Game Jam: Games for Change Student Jam 2026
The Game
Bear and Weevil were minding their own business, napping on the Floating Rainforest Island when EvCo, an evil corporation, turned up to build a massive data center in their rainforest. It's up to the two of them to stop it.
We made it in a 7 day game jam, and it won 1st Place Grand Prize.
Controls: WASD to move, Space to jump, E to interact and right mouse button to attack.
My Responsibilities
- Game design: kept the moveset simple for a 7 day jam and designed the tongue mechanic
- Level design: laid out the levels, including the big door that blocks the way to the boss
- Narrative design: wrote the story and the two main characters
- UI/UX design: designed the game's UI and player experience
01 Making the Theme Personal
Solution
- Everyone on the team is from South or Southeast Asia, where we have rainforests of our own, so we focused on the rainforest half of the theme.
- We picked an animal that lives in our rainforests as the hero: a sun bear. Then we gave him a cute friend, a weevil.
- The story is about a corporation destroying their home to build data centers.
Impact
- The theme became a story that felt personal to the team instead of a generic jungle setting.
02 Two Friends, One Message
Challenge
- Data centers hurting nature isn't an obvious topic, and I wanted to get it across without the game feeling like a lecture.
Solution
- I wrote the two characters to match real people. Bear is naive and aloof, like people who don't know what data centers cost the environment, so he has no idea his home is being damaged.
- Weevil sounds more educated and guides him. He's the friend who knows what's happening in the world.
- Their friendship is how the story explains what's going on.
Impact
- The story mirrors real life: one character who doesn't know what's happening, and one who does and helps him understand.
03 Simple Moves, One Special Tongue
Challenge
- We only had 7 days to make the whole game, so the mechanics had to stay simple. I still wanted it to feel different from other platformers.
Solution
- I designed a classic platformer moveset: a double jump, a glide and a dash.
- To make it ours, I asked our programmer to add a tongue the bear can use as a weapon. It stretches out to attack, and it also opens closed-off areas, like the big door before the boss.
- It's a nod to real sun bears, whose tongues can stretch up to 7 inches.
Impact
- Players already know the basic moves, and the tongue gives the game something of its own.
- The tongue does two jobs, attacking and opening the way forward.