Things Just Got Jammy
So it’s been a quiet few weeks on the blog front, and there’s a good reason for that…I decided to do a game jam! The GameMaker Studio 2 Betajam – to be exact.
This was actually the very first jam I’ve ever participated in, and the fact that it was over 2 weeks (instead of 2 days) really helped make the entire experience a little less daunting.
The theme of the jam was magic, but I didn’t really restrict myself to this, which is pretty evident when you see that my game takes place in space and is primarily about blowing shit up.
The premise of my game is simple, you’re in space surrounded by darkness trying to rescue stranded aliens. The player will collect suns to increase their visibility radius and help them better avoid the asteroid and space mines floating around.
My initial game idea actually started out as a side-scrolling platformer with a little robot character. I worked on this for about a week before pivoting to the space game idea I randomly came up with. It seemed crazy at the time to change my game with only a week left in the jam, but it was important to me to make something that I could be proud of. This is part of the difficult decision making that I hadn’t experienced during my casual game development, where hard deadlines don’t truly exist.
I’ve read a lot that “finishing a game” is a skill on its own, and now I have a much better understanding of what that means – if only on a small scale. All of the little decisions that have to be made, the compromise of understanding that working on one feature likely means something else in the game will suffer as a result, and ultimately having the ability to say something is “good enough” so you can move to the next item on what feels like a never-ending todo list.
My ultimate goal was not to win the jam, but to prove to myself that I could start and finish a game in 2-weeks – and make something that is relatively fun to play. I think I accomplished this, and even surprised myself in the process.
It can be scary to put your work out into the world for everyone to see and judge, but I’m extremely proud of what I’ve accomplished in a short period of time.
A lot of credit goes to my girlfriend, Shaye, for putting up with me during these 2-weeks while I worked seemingly nonstop to get this thing completed. Also to my brother, Matt, who motivated me to join the jam in the first place.
Check out and download my game from Itch.io here:
Also, be sure to check out Matt’s game and his blog here:
Thanks for reading!