This guide will help you make it through the 20 Second Game Jam and emerge victorious! There are some tips about surviving game jams without suffering as well as useful hints for making tiny games. Above all we want you to have a fun and relaxed jam, free from stress and worry. So if you’ve joined the 20 Second Game Jam or are thinking about it, read on.
The 20 Second Game Jam has been running in one form or another since 2020. It started life as a jam for people using the DragonRuby Game Toolkit and expanded in 2022 to a full-size jam that is open to any game engine.
Why did we decide to make a jam for such tiny games?
There are a lot of game jams out there. Pick one that suits you. Think about what you want to accomplish: do you have an idea that simply must be made? Do you want to learn or practice a skill? Do you want a fresh challenge? Does a short deadline motivate you to work harder or would you prefer to have a longer, more relaxed deadline?
Part of the idea behind the 20 Second Game Jam is to make it easy and accessible to everyone including first-time jammers and new game makers. It’s also intended to provide an interesting challenge for more experienced developers.
To keep it relaxed and friendly, the jam is long and you can start any time you like. We want to keep things as stress free as possible so you can concentrate on making a game your way, in your own time.
For the same reason, the jam is not ranked. We don’t have judges evaluating your game. There are no prizes. The winners in this jam are everyone who took part and managed to submit a game.
Working with a team to build a game can be a very rewarding experience. You can get more done together. You get to focus on your strengths or build up your skills by letting someone else take responsibility of other areas.
For non-programmers (artists, musicians, writers, etc) joining a team might be the only way to join the jam so for any programmers out there thinking “maybe I’m not good enough for a team”, remember that forming a team might be helping someone to join the jam who otherwise would not be able to participate.
Go to the #team-up channel on the jam discord to find team mates. Don’t be a wallflower. Don’t post your availability and vanish. See who has posted before and ask if they’re still available. Try searching the channel for keywords like artist or composer. Give examples of what you have done. It’s OK if it’s your first time. Say so and you may find a team with experienced jammers willing to mentor you, or other first timers wanting to learn together.
If you’re starting a team, say what you’re looking for: do you need an artist? Is there a specific style like pixel art that you want to work in? Do you need someone to work on music or sound effects? Do you need a writer for game dialog?
If you are struggling to come up with ideas, think about small games that you like, maybe a mini-game or a classic arcade game and try to change it up a bit. What if you made a game that’s inspired by Space Invaders, but the invaders are digging up from underground? What if Pac-Man was a hungry diner in a restaurant and the ghosts are waiters?
On the other hand, maybe you already have an idea for a bigger game. Can you make a 20-second slice of that game? Maybe focus just one gameplay mechanic and see how well you can hook players in. This is a great way to try out parts of your larger game and see how players get on with them.
There are tons of other ways to come up with game ideas. Visit the #game-ideas channel and you may get some good suggestions — or really stupid ones.
Whatever game you decide to make, one of the most important things to consider is the scope of your game. The smaller, the better. Game development typically takes a lot longer and requires more effort than anyone expects. There are so many moving parts that need to work together, it’s all too easy to run out of time and miss the deadline.
Think about the one most important aspect of your game idea and try to work on that. Don’t pile on features, don’t add complications that don’t need to be there.
There’s no hard and fast rule about what not to do but we suggest thinking about the one thing in your game idea that you really want to show to people and work on that. If your game idea is difficult to explain in one sentence, it’s probably too big.
And that brings us to the main focus of this jam. Your game must take 20 seconds or less to play. That means your gameplay has to end with some kind of game over condition within 20 seconds.
We encourage you to make your game as easily re-playable as possible so people can continue playing as many times as they like.
If you have plenty of time left over and you would like to make more than one level, that’s OK too but try to think of each level as a separate game. Although it may be tempting to carry over abilities, power-ups, number of lives, health, etc. into the next play-through or the next level, that is effectively just a longer game and not in the spirit of the jam.
Similarly, if your game has power-ups, it may be tempting to give the player a chance to add an extra second to game. This will result in games that are longer than 20 seconds and, again, not in the spirit of the jam.
The jam has optional themes that you can use as inspiration for your game. You don’t have to use one but they might help you to come up with an interesting or unexpected idea for your game. If you choose to use one of the themes, let everyone know about it. It’s fun to see how different game makers interpret the jam themes.
The 20 Second Game Jam might be luxuriously long but you still need to prioritise. Life can get in the way and you could end up with less time than you anticipated.
Your first goal should be to make a prototype. Something that can be played and that shows the world what your game is going to be like and how fun it is. If you have that, then in the very worst case you have something you can submit to the jam.
The other great reason to prototype your game is fun. Fun is hard to predict. Sometimes you will get your game into a state when you can properly play it and its… just a bit boring. This is something you don’t want to discover on the last day of the jam. A prototype will help you see how fun it is to play so you can fix up your gameplay as early and as easily as possible.
Jam games don’t have to be perfect so cut yourself some slack. Aim to get your game working and then focus on polishing it up. Prioritise the things that your game must have over things that will be nice to have. Striving to make the world’s best menu screen could stop you from finishing your game by the end of the jam.
Feel free to re-use code you wrote for other games. The same goes for assets like sound effects and graphics. You don’t have to make everything from scratch for this jam. We don’t want you to re-submit old games with a few changes — your game should be a new game, made for this jam — but you can definitely recycle parts of older games and improve upon them.
Getting honest feedback from other people is a good way to know if you’re on the right track. When you’re completely immersed in your game it can be hard to see any problems with it so fresh eyes are very valuable. Acting on feedback may help to make your game more fun and accessible to a larger audience. Sharing your work with other people is also a good way to keep the motivation levels high.
The main community for the jam is the Discord server https://discord.gg/X7Ttf6Dzee. It’s fun and friendly and it’s a great place to get early feedback on your game. Go to the #progress channel and show off what you’ve got so far. It’s fun to see how other people’s games develop and you could get some great tips from the other jammers.
Game development is well known for making people stressed and overworked. Don’t be one of them. This jam goes out of its way to give you enough time to make a game, even if you work all week or you have family or other commitments that prevent you from devving full-time. If you keep your game scope small enough, you won’t have to stay up all night to get your game finished.
Get plenty of sleep. Drink water. Take breaks. Walk around or exercise. Get outside and breathe some fresh air. Cook a meal. Talk with humans. Cuddle a pet. Watch a movie, read a book, play a game.
Try to submit your game before the jam officially ends. If that's not possible, let us know and try to finish your game within a reasonable time. We’ll find a way to get it into the jam. If you do submit your game late, it probably won’t get as many views from the jam but don’t worry too much about that.
In the sad event that you are not able to finish your game, it’s OK to submit it as long as it's playable. You should feel proud that you made something even if it’s not what you had hoped.
If you want to get more people playing your game, post about it on social media and notify your friends or communities you belong to. On itch.io, your game will get more views if it has a good name and an eye-catching cover image.
We would absolutely love it if you can play as many other submissions as you can and let the makers know what you liked and what you think could be improved. Comments should be respectful and kind but honest feedback is what most people will want so don’t be afraid of saying what you liked less about a game.
So you submitted a game to the jam? Fantastic! Why not tell us about your experience making the game? How did you come up with the idea? What were you aiming for and how well do you think you did? What problems did you have and how did you solve them? What new things did you learn? How was working with a team? How was working solo? What would you do differently if you had to do it all over again? Will you keep working on the game, maybe making it bigger? What might people be surprised to know about your game?
You could write it on the game page on itch, make a video, publish it on a blog or on the Discord server in the #write-up channel. However you do it, do let everyone know about it. People genuinely want to hear your story so share it around.
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Nice