Game Overview
No Big Deal Bar is a chaotic 2D pixel arcade game set in a rowdy Western saloon. As the fearless waiter, your job is simple: deliver beers to the cowboys! But nothing in this bar ever goes as planned—gunfights break out, people slip on spilled drinks, and sometimes cowboys literally fall from the ceiling. Your one and only goal: keep your beer safe and balanced as you dodge every kind of unexpected chaos. If you drop the beer, it’s game over! Deliver as many beers as possible and see how long you can survive in this endless madness.
This project was developed for Brackeys Game Jam 2025, themed “Nothing Can Go Wrong.” Our team consisted of three members, and I was responsible for the entire gameplay design, art, and UI.
My Role & Contributions
I was responsible for the overall gameplay design, all visual art, and user interface. My work began with defining the core mechanics: the player must use left and right movement to maintain the beer’s balance while dodging obstacles. The action never stops—after each successful delivery, the next table awaits, and both the player’s walking speed and the pace of cowboy gunfights increase over time, ramping up the challenge. My goal was to capture that frantic energy you see at real beer festivals, where waiters carry trays piled high with drinks, never knowing what might go wrong next.
For the game’s visuals, I created every pixel by using Aseprite. This included designing the entire bar scene, environmental details, the main character, beers, obstacles, and various customer types. Each cowboy was given a unique personality through their sprite animations—walking, shooting, dying, and idle poses. The main waiter character also features distinctive walking, slipping, and “game over” animations. To ensure a cohesive style, I also designed all the UI and menu elements, keeping everything consistent with the game’s playful Western atmosphere. All assets were then integrated and animated in Unity, the engine used for this project.
The core gameplay is intentionally simple but highly challenging. As the waiter, you don’t need to solve every problem in the bar—you just have to keep your own task under control. The most important mechanic centers on a balance bar above your head: as you carry beer through the chaos, you must carefully keep the balance bar centered. If it drifts too far to the left or right, you’ll lose your footing, slip, and your precious beer will crash to the floor:
This focus on a single objective, paired with increasingly absurd hazards, makes for a tense yet humorous experience. The more beers you deliver, the higher your score, but every new round brings fresh chaos and faster obstacles. There is no final victory, only the endless pursuit of the next perfect delivery.
Developing No Big Deal Bar was both fun and instructive. While my teammates handled most of the programming, I worked closely with them to adapt and refine art and animation assets, making sure that each visual detail supported and enhanced the gameplay. Through this process, I strengthened my skills in pixel art production and learned more about how to tightly integrate art with game mechanics for maximum impact.
Upon release, the game received positive feedback for its humor, distinctive visuals, and addictive mechanics. Many players appreciated the absurdity of the premise and the way the simple gameplay loop kept them coming back for higher scores. For me, this project reinforced the importance of strong visual identity and tight focus in small-scale game development. Working under the time pressure of a game jam also helped me become more efficient and creative in both design and communication.
