YOU ARE THE MONSTER (To yourself?)

This is a short and sad victory story, or rather a collection of notes gathered during the development process of a jam entry that turned into a rollercoaster experience of two burnouts spanning over three different prototypes made for the same 10-day game jam.

First Prototype ( Link to itch game page )

I started the jam strong for the first few days, making a really cool-looking project, but which had little to no gameplay on it.

I had planned vast mechanics with RPG-elements. Defending your monster babies, stealing treasures to your cave to encourage the eggs hatching to babies, which then would require food from a human village, to grow the babies to become adults that assist you with keeping the Heroes away from your cave. Stopping them from stealing your precious treasures and breaking your ancient priceless vases. ( looking at you, Link!)

But... In the end, what I managed to do in a few days; You could just breathe fire and make the ground burn.

I suppose it can be used as a paint program with the fire.

FlamePaint(tm)

The planned overscoped complexity of the game is really better for a 6-month project instead.

Even if the game was supposed to have a small world, there was still too deep mechanics underneath that would take weeks to make 100% working and polished.

And now that those mechanics were left out, every other thing built to support that had to be removed too. Like a domino effect of backtracking to where there's no mechanics left.

Around this time I realized:

"I'm experiencing some sort of a burnout. I've been unable to bring myself to open the jam project today. It's disgusting me too much. x(

I didn't plan on "winning the jam" with my game anyway, because I want beginners to rank higher than me, (A super high veteran master game developer with 25 years of experience!) instead. They should have some glory! 🙂 So I will most likely drop the development and will just attempt to grab what I learned from it; Infinite decals / destruction marks, and overlay stuff (the wooden table and "canvas") and that it truly is easy to overscope a project.

Anything under 2 weeks isn't really a long time to make a fully functional game and with polish. So don't aim for that and don't stress about it like I have!

Aim to learn instead and have fun!

Keep on being awesome and have faith in learning!

If you've learned something, you've already won the jam! "

I was then left rambling in the smoldering ruins of my projects for a while:

"I tried to work on the first project again, but I'm only reminded by myself that indeed this wasn't supposed to become a fully functional game, but rather a thing to learn from. I already gained the knowledge I ever will from this, so the project is already brought to successful conclusion.

Stuff was learned = Victory achieved

Such a game can be later finished to a playable state post-jam. Don't have to worry about making it so this week yet.

There's various forms of a project end. I've not given up, I've just come to a point where there's less sense to continue, as I'm not gaining more positive things from it than negative. I might even make a second game that may be in playable form before jam deadline. XD

If I take the shooting concept from the current game and put it to a new project, it might become something that works.

There's too many things tied to the game objects. I need a fresh project to sort of clean it up a bit."

At this point I created a second prototype, where the player would just defend a dragon nest in the middle of the screen, whilst enemies would come from all around the edges of the screen to attack that nest, and the player would have to shoot at the enemies to keep them away. This prototype was never uploaded on itch, just tested in the editor, and I stopped working on it as well, thinking about leaving the Jam.

But, 1-2 days after resting:

"Well. It seems I've risen from the ashes like a phoenix and got a new project rolling for the game jam. Already have more progress gameplay-wise than before. Less focus on the graphical side of things means more functionality and fun."

I had created a third and the Final prototype for the jam. It felt a lot better.

I went a simpler shooter route compared to my original overscoped ideas, but that thing still takes a lot to program. Keeping it simple isn't always that simple.

There's also different levels of complex simple. Like.. Tetris has a simpler gameplay loop than my shooter, but is still harder to program.

There's also time-differencies. For me, Tetris is harder to program than a 2D jrpg Zelda-like Skyrim. However the writing of the content takes a longer time for Skyrim, due to story elements and game events. Also world creation takes time. But the code is simpler and gameplay loop perhaps finished faster than on Tetris. 

It all varies case-by-case, depending for example on the tools, engine, language used, and the user's abilities and motivations. 

I made 3 projects for this jam, going simpler and simpler.

This final one is just the most simplified concept, but that can also make it most quickly enjoyable as the learning curve is low.

And don't need much tutorials for the game.

Final Prototype ( Link to itch game page )

I took a new approach. I'm treating the project as if I'm doing this for the first time ever. First game ever.

I call it:

Roikku's Roleplay Method

A wise person asks:

"Does that mean critically overscoping and watching with sadness as everyone else finishes?"

I reply: "I don't know, it's my first time."

"I've never overscoped before."

This roleplay is refreshing. I feel like a baby with no worries.

This roleplay of keeping it simple and attempting to experience programming as if for the very first time, it allowed me to push away the burnout and keep on keeping on, making a functionally better product than before, although less polished as it's my first game so ofcourse there will be room for improvement!

Conclusion

I survived the game jam and I felt like I learned a lot during the way, as I started to keep a more open mind for things.

Even if I didn't submit the first or second prototype directly into the jam, I learned about making infinite decals using surfaces in Game Maker, tricks by using overlays, and I learned about scoping, scheduling your time, and about managing your stress with make-belief.

I am proud and amazed of the game's Amazing 823kb Filesize!

I feel happy in the end. The journey was exciting, and the end of it a relief.

What could YOU learn from this?

Be passionate, Experiment, Fail, Fail again, Allow your idea to adjust to the scope of your abilities. It's fine, it's an adventure!

If you feel like you're about to give up. Don't give up, maybe try a new point of view like I did?

It seemed to work this time. Just enough for a tangible product to emerge and success to be achieved.

Thank you for your time, fellow game dev enthusiasts. <3

P.S. The edits done on this after deadline are mainly grammar fixes, etc. My mind was already blank, I wish I had content to add. x)