I have a few thoughts about my experinence with my first game jam, and wanted to talk about it for future me and other folks that might be doing their first game jam!

The Process as it Was

Going into the jam, my main goal was to just start and finish A game based on the theme. I set my expectations low (and still managed to not cross that bar, but I will talk about that a little later). I also knew going into it that I was not about to spend super long hours trying to get as much done as possible. I planned on taking the day off and spending all my reasonble free time on it, but never in to crunch territory.  

Beyond those things and an extremely basic layout of how I was going to spend my day, that's it. I really wanted to pace myself and not push myself too hard. I have learned in the past that I am able to get really excited about something and dive into it so hard that I come out burned out super quickly, and I just don't want to keep doing that with game dev.

Then, I started up my stream and got to making. 

Rating My Own Game

I think it is important to take an honest look at your game and analyze it as if it wasn't yours. Other people are doing that, and they are the people you want to play your game! So I'm going to rate it based on the Ludum Dare judging scales. 

Innovation

2 / 5

I ended up really liking my concept for the jam. The idea being that you would transfer to a different level every ten seconds, effectively giving you 10 seconds to get as far as you could. It was different than the "a new threat comes at you every ten seconds" take that I see so much of. While building it, I went in thinking it was going to be a really innovative concept, but all in all, making a real game out of it doesn't seem all that possible. The levels don't "create themselves" and there isn't a clear way to make the concept really shine. I still am pretty proud of myself for coming up with a neat, albeit shallow, concept though. 

Fun

0 / 5

Yea, a big fat 0. This game is honestly trash. The movement is just bad all around, the camera doesn't follow proper in most cases, and their is little to no feedback on whats going on, etc etc. There are a ton of issues with the game. I think the biggest glaring issue though is the level design. 

The first thing about that is that for the game to feel coherent and make the concept a reality, I would need a lot more game than what is there. You just need to wait for one level to get to the powerup at the end so you can beat the next level until the end. There just isn't anything fun or interesting there. Might as well just have put it all in one level that progressively give you new powerups. There would need to be more powerups, "powerup gates", and branching paths to really make the game fun and interesting. 

The other thing is that the levels themselves are poorly designed. There is a lot of winding paths just for the sake of being there. They don't add any challenge or insight, they just are. Some of that is intentional because of the 10 second timer. The idea being that I wanted there to be just enough level in 10 seconds so that you did something important, and were just able to see the next important thing. However, without any interesting platforming mechanics, or things to do (like beat up enemies or collect coins) they are boring and wasteful. Not to mention that some levels are just unnecessarily difficult (the red one).  The placement of the spikes combined with the lack of movement control and the bad camera angles really leads to a bad experience. 

Overall, I think that the game lived and died on level design making the concept shine, and it just didn't live up to any of it.

Theme

 4 / 5

I might be a little too generous here, but I think that this category is pretty lenient. Comparing my concept with the common one of "enemies spawn every 10 seconds" make me think that my game is pretty closely tied to the timer (if you ignore the skip button I added late in development because I was worried my game would make you wait too long and be boring). The fact that enemies spawn every 10 seconds is arbitrary for a lot of games, but with my game (and some better level design) the amount you get done in 10 seconds can impact what you are seeing in the future. I still am not 100% sure I deserve a high score on this, but I definitely think I didn't do bad in this category. 

Graphics 

1.5 / 5

When I started, I thought I was going to do everything myself, but right away my friend Bapter started making pixel art for the game and he ended up making and animating the cat and the kitty treat powerups! I gave some suggestions like the collar and eye colors and powerup indicators for game design purposes™️ (I wanted to try to indicate the next and current level to the player) that could have gone better.  However given the time and the fact that he is just a friend with some free time and occasionally does pixel art, I think he did a fantastic job. I'm really happy with how the cat turned out. He also did the cat treat powerups which turned out cute as well.

I ended up doing the tiles, chest, and key quickly in 20 minutes, and I think they turned out pretty neat as well. I think they are too repetitive, but individually they don't look too bad. I even made 2 more versions for walls and floors that I didn't end up using, but c'est la vie. 

The low score mostly comes from the lack of graphics altogether. No background, no effects, no particles, no juice. I just didn't see time for it, and for things like particles and backgrounds, I didn't immediately know how to make it work in Unity. I'm sure it's super simple, but I just wanted to focus on what I for sure knew I could do and if I had time, I would quickly learn and make the adjustments. 

Audio

0 / 5

This is a similar story to Graphics, except I did none of it. Didn't know how to do it, and even if I had a tiny bit of time, I would of ripped music from good ol' Kevin Macleod.

Humor

0 / 5

Not much to say, it just ain't funny.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Mood

0.5 / 5

Eh, there is some "niceness" to it with the cute cat, but 0.5 / 5 is pretty generous. 

Overall 

1.5 / 5

As I said earlier, the game lived and died on level design. Unfortunately I don't think it's breathing anymore. The 1.5 score only comes from the theme and concept.

Lessons Learned

Time and planning is only a little more important than you might think.

Obviously, during a game jam time is of the essence. Crunch is never a good thing and you should never push yourself too hard, but I should have spent a little more thought on what I was doing with my time. I think about the manifesto that I wrote for a class and that it mentions Hofstadter's law. The manifesto mentions not planning anything, but I remember writing that as a hyperbole and as a way to say "stop worrying about things and just make" and for a game  planning your time a little more carefully than "eh just do what you need" is part of what is needed. 

Another aspect of this, is that if I was to plan better, I could have done the art and music a bit more justice and tied them to the game. Made some more visual queues and so on. Because I said "eh it will get done later/last", it really didn't tie the game together and could have pushed the game up in the places that it was low on. 

Level design is king.

In games where level design is applicable, level design should be something like 50% of your time. I spent far too little time on level design, and it really cost me (and I already talked about why). In the future, I will either spend a LOT more time on level design, or I will try making games where that is far less important. 

Keep expectations low.

After all was said and done, I was pretty dissapointed by may game. I didn't make anything that I think would reflect my game design skills (or lack there of). The self doubt and anxiety of it all started creeping in, but I had to remind myself that this was my first go at it, and all the circumstances leading to the idea that I didn't do THAT bad considering. Do I still want to do better? Of course! I just shouldn't keep beating myself up about it and to make sure I keep my expectations low. I'm again reminded of my manifesto ("Your game is bad") and the idea of "so what if it's bad? you made it!". It can be hard to take your own advice, and this is another example of drilling down on that.

Starting and finishing something will make you feel so much better, even if it is bad.

I had started making a game before this jam, but I always got stuck in the details of it and eventually just felt too bad about it that I petered off and didnt continue doing anything game design until this jam. I have been listening to some game design pdocasts and one of the guests mentioned finishing a game being important, and it's only now as I write this that I realize that is why I feel so much better about this game and game development now than I did while I was making my game. It's because I can look at a somewhat finished product and analyze it, learn from it, and move on to the next idea. I don't have to dwell on my perceived failings and fix all the things I hate about it unless I really want to and the game doesn't just sit there dying. 

Final Thoughts

I am glad to have done the game jam and to finally post something else on my itch.io page. I'm going to keep trying to do more short game jams and keep writing about it to learn and reflect and hone my skills. This was a great way to rip the band-aid off and a great way to make me feel good about continuing and pursuing my dream job. I have talked a lot about my lack of motivation and mental hurdles of the game design process, and doing a game jam feels like training and exposure therapy to getting over those mental hurdles. 

While writing this, I kept mentioning my manifesto, and I remember writing that with fresh thoughts and energy and just not putting too much deep thought into it. It was really just naive top of the head thoughts that I spat out in an hour (much like this), but I think it really does do a good job of illustrating what I think and agree are some of the tenants and things to keep in mind while designing. Revisiting that manifesto seems like a good idea for future me. 

I was glad to stream most of my progress on my twitch and have all the vods saved if you are interested. I intented to do a video essay for YouTube, but I am already writing this post super late, and creating a video will a lot of time and motivation I don't have. As my partner said (and I super appreciate her for her support) "you can just try it next time." 

So I hope to continue with my game jams, and improve my game, art, posts and hopefully videos in the future! 

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave some feedback!