Team game jam project inspired by Papers, Please, built around rule-based judgment and player decisions.
Iudicium Finale was created during a 3-day game jam organized by Gamagora students during the October 2025 holidays. To match the Halloween theme, the team worked around the idea of death and final judgment.
The goal was to design a simple but polished game that could realistically be completed within the deadline. The result became an internal "Saint Peter Papers, Please": the player studies characters, objects, and information, then decides whether each soul deserves heaven or hell.
Core concept:
The player must judge each character by reading their information and interpreting the objects linked to them. The player can only inspect a few objects placed in front of them, and through dialogue must decide whether the character goes to heaven or hell.
Alongside my role as game designer, I improvised as a producer by acting as a communication bridge between the design team and the programming team.
I regularly checked programming progress, asked questions when technical issues appeared, and made sure constraints were understood by the design team. At the same time, I communicated the design vision, gameplay intentions, and project priorities to the programmers.
Clear Excel documents helped the team stay aligned. This organization allowed us to move efficiently and deliver a finished, functional game within the given timeframe.
Although I was not the narrative designer, I designed tools that made the design team's work clear and immediately usable for programming.
We created an Excel document gathering all characters, information sheets, objects, clue importance, and whether each element pointed toward heaven or hell. A Word document centralized ID references to connect narrative data with implementation.
This structure allowed the design team to create ten characters with precise descriptions and objects, while giving programmers a coherent production-ready system.
Because there was no dedicated artist in the team, I took an additional responsibility as illustrator to avoid slowing production or relying on online assets.
I created the interface, illustrations, and visual assets used in the game. This helped keep the visual direction coherent while showing my ability to stay versatile, multitask, and react quickly when production needs changed.
I also organized art requests through an Excel document so the team could track what was needed, what was in progress, and what was already delivered.
Thanks to realistic objectives and strong organization, we finished the game before the end of the jam. This gave us time for a QA pass, which is uncommon in short game jams.
The design team quickly identified bugs and recorded them in an Excel document to structure follow-up with the programming team. By the end of the jam, the game was fully finalized and did not require additional rework.
This was praised by the participants, who highlighted that our game felt truly finished.
Improvising as a producer taught me how much communication costs when it is missing. Regularly relaying priorities, constraints, and intentions between the design and programming teams kept the project moving without friction.
Excel character sheets and Word ID references made the design team's work immediately usable by programmers. This let us build ten complete characters and a coherent decision system in three days.
With no dedicated artist in the team, I took on the interface and character illustrations rather than slowing production. Organizing art requests in a tracker gave everyone visibility on what was needed, in progress, and delivered.
