1/31/2025 - A Successful Game Jam

I finally did it - I participated in a game jam, and made a game from start to finish within the time frame. It was absolutely exhausting but I feel a lot more confident in my own abilities now that I have something completed under my belt.

The theme of the jam was “Persistence”. I based my game on a Grimm brother tale of a shepherd boy who described eternity as a bird who flew to a mountain once every hundred years to sharpen its beak. Once that mountain was completely laid low, only then did the first second of eternity pass. I don’t think that initial inspiration lasted very long in development, but that’s how I landed on the mountain. Since the story described a bird, I went with a crow (because I think they are really cool) and a rock with a shiny object inside of it. So you are a crow, and you have to keep the rock in the air to build power, then it will fall down to the mountain. The game ends when the rock burrows a sufficient depth (achieved at 40 hits). It would be impossible, but you earn money and buy upgrades at every attempt to make it easier.

Overall, the programming wasn’t too difficult. I thought I’d have trouble with the shop mechanic but it was over after just a few hours, and after running the game a few times I got all the prices in a good place. The thing that gave me the most difficulty was just exporting the project. I kept getting an error everytime I exported the project. I reinstalled the export programs multiple times and tried a bunch of different settings, but as it turns out my hard drive didn’t have enough space to properly download the export templates used by Godot, which caused an error anytime I tried to export the project because it just didn’t have everything it needed. Quite embarrassing.

Luckily, the experience I gained in my unfinished products as well as the way Godot is built made a lot of the work really quick. I was able to do most of the work in short bursts of a few hours. Anything I didn’t know was just a single search in the Godot’s manual. As a Unity refugee, it’s really refreshing to have official documentation that actually works.

So, my post-mortem feelings?

• The programming is a mess since I had to prioritize quick speed over my typical careful design, though I certainly plan to gain more experience so that I can make good designs even under tougher time constraints.
• The last dev-log was basically a bunch of paragraphs lamenting the fact that I hate my own art, but somehow under the strict time constraint, I ended up really happy with how the game looks, as simple as it is. So maybe I just need to stop worrying about it so much.
• This was also the first time I actually got to the step where sounds are added into the game, and I know I have a LOT to learn there, but it was a good first step. Adding sounds isn’t super difficult, as it turns out!
• Playtesting is non-negotiable, even in tight time-constraints. I finished the game about 8 hours ahead of time, sent it to friends and family, and then I spent an extra hour fixing issues they found. Luckily, everything they found was an easy fix, but it made the game improve a TON with the little changes they suggested. The most important change they found was the fact the game was REALLY HARD. It was not meant to be difficult, but one family member took upwards of 90 attempts to beat it which was NOT what I wanted, so I was able to make the game easy enough to fit the ten minute experience I made.

But finally, there is a feeling I’ve been putting off for a while as a consequence of this little side project. I don’t want to work on my cooking game anymore. The cooking game was meant to be a smaller project so that I could get my feet wet, but the fact I am constantly fighting against myself to make it just held me back. With this project, my first completed project is done, and the purpose of the cooking game has already been fulfilled. There’s… no motivation left. It’s time for me to move onto a game that I’ve been waiting to make. Sadly there’s three different directions that can go because I have three different ideas, but I think it’s time to move on. But I’ve learned a TON because of that project, so it’ll live on somehow. I might come back to it one day, who knows. But we’ve got a whole new horizon ahead of us, so let’s see where it goes.

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