About

I am making this post to describe my Game Dev journey from wanting to make games through to entering and completing my first game jam.

This is a long form post.  If you only want to read only the Game Jam aspects scroll down to "The GameDev.tv Game Jam 2024".

I have also made a list of first game jam tips at the end of this post that might help other people.

Wanting to Make Games

Like many people these days, I have grown up with technology.  I'm old enough that as I have matured, so has technology, and what initially seemed impossible to me is now becoming a reality.  Over the years I have always been "good with technology", that family member you go to for tech advice.  I built my first computer at the age of 15, and for a time even worked in IT at a business to business level.

This means that I was always exposed to the technical side of computing and picked up various scripting languages and skills, and occasionally dabbled in a bit coding myself, but never resulting in anything tangible.  I have always wondered how games are made and how they work, and making the leap from understanding how things work to trying to do it myself has been a logical progression for me.

More recently, I had looked into trying to make games with Unity a few years ago when it was becoming popular, but at the time "Life" got in the way of any real progress in making my own games.

Then the big Unity pricing scandal happened last autumn.

When I started watching the fallout from the scandal, I came across a couple of YouTube channels that discussed the reaction in the game making community.  This is when I learned about the Godot game engine, a completely free and open source game engine.  When I looked it up, there were already a lot of tutorials and "how to's" available for the engine, and I thought "why not have a look".

Making My First Game (Santa's Crash - Not uploaded or published)

After having a look at the Godot engine and following a few tutorials to learn the most basic of basics, I decided on making a game for Christmas for my niece and nephew to play when they came over for their presents.  I didn't decide to do this until early December, which didn't give me a great deal of time.  In the end I only had a couple of weeks to make it in my spare time.

When I thought about what the game needed, I started looking around for "free" assets I could use to speed up my development.  I noticed that a lot of the "free" assets had so many different licences and caveats, that to really make a game using them would require me to keep an active spreadsheet of what I was using, how I was using it and if I needed to provide credit, or a copyright, or a copy of their licence terms within my game (even though I was making it for "personal" use, I'm hoping that I might refresh it and upload it for others to play or pay for next Christmas).

On realising this, I decided to make my own assets, it will take longer to make but be simpler as anything I make is mine.  Now when it comes to graphical design, 3d modelling and sound design, sound editing and making music, I wouldn't really even call myself a novice.  I know what applications I can use to do certain things, but I don't know the software well enough to be a professional in any of it.

After deciding this, I planned out the game; the format, the characters, the mechanics I wanted to include, the logic and the sounds.

As with anything when you're learning, there were bits I got stuck on, bits I reused or edited from tutorials and tinkering with the engine, but eventually I had a game.  It was a little buggy, but it was a game, it had a Main Menu, 5 levels, a scoring system, and mechanics (that worked for the most part).

If you're curious about the premise, Santa had crashed his sleigh at the start of the level, and you had to dodge dogs (themed after our family's dogs) and snowmen while platforming up to the roofs of houses to drop presents or coal down the chimneys.  It's a 2D platformer with fully custom art and sounds.

Once Christmas arrived, the game was made and the audience arrived.  The simple verdict is, they really enjoyed it.  My niece and nephew are quite young, so they needed some help with the controls.  Then my brother and his wife had a go, they spent most of the afternoon competing to see who could get the highest score.

Learning More, Other Projects, Looking at Jams

Following the decided success of Santa's Crash, I started looking into game development and making games with a bit more focus.

I decided I wanted to learn how to make a 3D game, and I wanted to learn about game jams.

To this end, I started watching what was happening with the Godot Wild Jam, a monthly game jam focussed on the Godot game engine, and started trying to make some 3D models to add into a game.

I had planned to try making a 3D easter themed game and managed to make most of the 3D assets I would need before "Life" got in the way again.  I also tried one month to see if I could make a game within the rules of a game jam, trying to follow the rules, theme and time requirements of one of the Wild Jam jams.  I never joined the jam and, as with the 3D modelling, "Life" got in the way.

Missing my own deadline for the Easter game, and separately realising that having the time to make a game for a game jam was the biggest challenge for me, I began to feel like I couldn't really progress, or that I couldn't move forwards.

Then, randomly, after a bizarre evening in work where I turned a rotten pear into a mascot for the evening, I decided to try to keep going.  The random work evening gave me an idea for a cheesy survival horror style game where you are hunted by fruit and vegetables.

I decided I was going to make this in 3D and that I would try to make this a game that I would release.  The game is still a work in progress, but it is coming along, and while the scope has evolved slightly throughout it's development, I think I have managed to avoid too much "scope creep".  Some bits have dropped, some bits have expanded slightly, but nothing mechanically.

Throughout this whole experience, I was always looking at videos of games being made by others through some YouTube channels, looking at simple tutorials on features, or how to use tools like Blender effectively.

I eventually came across a video explaining a Humble Bundle of GameDev.tv courses for Godot.  I hadn't come across GameDev.tv content yet and looked it up.  It seemed like there was a focus on actually teaching the engine in a methodical and progressive way with GameDev.tv, so I purchased the bundle (not that I've had time to look at the courses properly yet).

Watching the GameDev.tv content on YouTube made me aware of their game jam, and that it was open to anyone, of any skill level.  So I decided to try making a game within the rules of a game jam again.  Either because I had more experience from trying before, or because I was more conscious of the importance of the time frame, I tried to plan out a game that I felt confident I could make within the timeframe, including time to make the art and do the sound work.

I still didn't join the jam because I didn't know if I would be able to make the game.  My plan was to upload a game that was pretty much complete and I hadn't seen much information about people submitting unfinished games, so I didn't want to risk my game not being accepted into the jam because it was unfinished.

To make the game, I settled on a timescale of 8 days.  I didn't start work on the game until the day after the jam had started, and I wanted to make sure I had time to create an itch.io account and get my game uploaded and submitted.  As I had never done this before, I was unsure as to how complicated it might be to become a developer on itch.io.

The 8 days broke down as:

• Planning - This was a couple of hours of work after deciding on how I would accommodate the theme of the game jam that included the type of game I was making, planning out the sprites I would need for different objects and which would need animations, the mechanics I would need to include and what the expected interactions would be between various objects.
• 2 Days for Artwork - I always seem to start here after I plan out my game.  I normally see tutorials recommending that you start with the coding and mechanics, but I find it easier to organise the game and the mechanics if I can see what is supposed to be there.
• 4 Days for Coding - This involved importing the artwork, setting up the level and implementing the mechanics.  When I got stuck doing this, I would take the mechanic I was working on back to core logical functions to identify relationships and where I need to have scripts and interactions.  UI work was also done during the coding stage.
• 2 Days for Sound - I always leave this for last because, for me, it is the most difficult part to get right, or to even get good enough that it doesn't take anything away from the game.  I'm not a musician or a sound engineer, and literally make my audio using a headset microphone and Audacity, and my music using LMMS.  neither of which I'm an expert in using.

On the last day of this, after finishing the other stages, I exported my game, created an itch.io account, uploaded the game, joined the jam and submitted my game.

The GameDev.tv Game Jam 2024

After joining the jam and submitting my game, unimaginatively called "A last Stand Story", I was unsure of what to do next with the jam.

I started looking at the forum for the jam and noticed there were a few posts made by other people doing their first jam and had a look at them.

Like me, it was their first jam and they were asking for people to look at their games and give them some feedback.  That's exactly what I wanted, so I decided to make a forum post as well.  I decided to point out that I wasn't the first, or even the second to do this by titling it as "Another first game jam moment".

Within a few hours I got my first bit of feedback, I saw the notification and felt a certain anxiety in wanting to read it.  Of course I wanted to know what other people thought of my game, but I was full of self doubt; would they like it?  Would they hate it?  Had I really done enough to justify someone else's time in playing it?

When I read the feedback, it was a very freeing moment, I had received my first bit of feedback, and it was positive.  Then I got another piece of feedback, and then another.

Even now, I still think I got lucky.  For the theme I had an interesting story that fit very well.  I hoped I had done enough to illustrate and respect that story.

Play it here - https://crazyhoundgamedesign.itch.io/a-last-stand-story

As the voting week progressed I received a lot more feedback than I thought I would, I appreciate every word of it.  However, when I started looking at other people's games, I noticed there was quite a lot of people that didn't have any ratings yet.  They hadn't had any feedback, and they could be like me, doing their first game jam filled with self doubt and unsure as to whether or not they would continue game development after the jam.  So I went back to the forum and asked if anyone else was going to look at the unrated games.  This started a conversation on the forum and seems to have actually encouraged other participants to look more at the games that didn't have any ratings yet.

Over the week of voting, I played 92 different games, by no means the most, some were good, some were incomplete, and some weren't even games.  I always tried to leave positive feedback and if I found someone that hadn't managed to upload their game properly, left a comment to let them know that something wasn't right.  Most of the games I looked at had 0 ratings, so I feel like I was able to give something back to the community.  I didn't want someone to go away from it wondering why their game didn't get any feedback and feeling like it wasn't worth their time entering the jam.

The Results and Final Thoughts

At the time of writing this post, the jam only finished yesterday and the results are in.

My game performed a lot better than I expected it to in the jam, and the ratings.  Over the last week, I was watching the analytics for my game closely, and as of now has 63 browser plays, 40 comments on the ratings page, 4 comments on the game page and it had 47 ratings in the jam.  That's 63 people that played my game, 44 people that took the time to give me some feedback, and a lot of people spending their time playing my game.  The first game I have ever published, to say I'm happy would be an understatement.

For the game jam results, my game scored best in the Theme and Story categories with rankings of #14 and #15 respectively.  For the overall category, my game ranked #183 out of 1,115 games in the jam.

I was pretty much in shock seeing those results.  The first game I published, and entered into a jam, had been played by so many people and it also seems to have been really well received.

So, how was my experience?

I think that joining a game jam is likely to be a positive experience for most people who are really focussing on learning to make games.  If you join the right jam, and put the right focus into it, it can be a rewarding experience that can prove to someone that they can do it, they can make a game and that there will be people that will play it, and enjoy it.

It has been a positive experience for me, to the point where I have even engaged with the community, found followers and followed others.  I'm unsure of how to really progress at this moment, but the fact I have gotten this far has proven to myself that I can do it, and that I should continue to move forwards.  No I'm not making any money (yet), I don't have thousands of people following my every move or update, but what I have gained is so much more valuable than any of that, the confidence to keep going.

Tips for Other New Developers

As a final note, here are a few tips for other people thinking of joining a jam.

• Pick the right jam - try to find a jam that accepts people of your skill level.  If you're only starting out, you probably don't want to join a specialist jam, or a jam focussed on a specific technology (unless you know that technology inside out).  I'm a beginner and learning, and proud? of it.
• Plan your project - once you decide to join a jam, look over the theme, the rules and the timeframe.  Try to make a project that you can comfortably complete within the timeframe (this might mean simpler mechanics than you initially like, 2D instead of 3D, etc.).
• Try to break the time down into high level tasks - if you plan on making your own assets, give yourself enough time to make them and tweak them, and enough time for coding your game.  If you plan to use 3rd party assets, think about breaking the coding work into discrete tasks like making the level, making the characters, coding the interactions, making the UI.
• Keep the last day of the jam for exporting and uploading - if the jam is 10 days, keep the last day free and plan to complete your game in 9 days.  This will give you time to deal with uploading your game and joining the jam.  You could use it to tidy your game a little before uploading, but ensure you understand how to upload and submit your game before doing this.
• Once your game is submitted, and the jam is over - don't just post it and forget it.  You've put work into your game and if you really want to learn game development, you need to how your game performs.  If the jam has public votes, get involved, play other games, vote on them, and always try to leave feedback (if you can give positive feedback, great, if not, try to leave constructive feedback, try to think about what the developer can do to improve their game, or let them know which aspect of their game didn't quite work).  You want feedback on your submission, so why not give some as well.
• Interact with the forum (if available) - if there is a forum for the game jam, get involved, see what people are talking about, if you have a comment on what they're saying, say it.  If you want to try and start a new discussion, do it.  If you've submitted a game and are participating in the jam, YOU have as much right as anyone else to get involved and start a conversation.
• Don't be disappointed - we always hope we will get good, positive feedback for our games, but there will be criticism as well.  When a piece of feedback isn't entirely positive, or just plain negative, actually read it and try to understand what they are saying.  If they are explaining that a particular piece of your game isn't good or is broken, it gives you something to work on.  If the feedback is just plainly negative with no description of why it's negative, then it's not feedback and should be dismissed until someone else lets you know why you're getting negative feedback.