Hey all, I started game dev last summer, currently working on my first commercial project called Radiant Bricks.
A few tips that I found helpful for getting started:
- Keep the scope small. If you let it, you will think of all kinds of ideas that you won't be able to implement in 2 weeks as a beginner. IMO, if you think of something like that, add it to your list as a possible option, but figure out what to prioritize and implement those first. Then work on adding the cool ideas if you have time.
- For game jams, keep in mind the code doesn't have to be pretty. The nice thing is you can do things that don't scale. So even if it's janky on a bigger scale, as long as it works consistently, it's probably good enough to move on. Refactor as you need to.
- Speaking of refactoring, I tend to implement something the simplest way first. Maybe you intend to have your character take damage when it hits something? At first, just have it kill the character so you can be sure the rest of the setup works, then go back add your health and test from there.
- This is the same with graphics by the way. depending on what I decide for the graphics, I may simply start with squares and circles to work on the mechanics.
- Focus on the core gameplay loop first. I'd encourage you to do a game design document, personally, this is an area I plan to focus on for the jam as I haven't done this like I should. Even if it's just a page, it can help you focus on getting stuff focused and get you to think through some questions for your project.
- To me, if I can get started and get a start and end state, including a main menu, then I at least have a functioning game. There's a way for the player to start the game and a way for the player to lose. If I have a win condition, I'd want to add that too. If there's scoring, obviously I'd try to add a basic version of that. So getting that boilerplate setup can make it easier to go back and finesse things/improve things, without going through the game jam and realizing later, "Oh, there's no way for the player to game over, I have an hour left to do that..."
My biggest tip If you aren't as familiar with code and you do a tutorial, it can be really helpful. But one thing I see beginners do is they THINK they understand the code, but if they stopped to think about it they really don't. I did a video about this recently and created a github repo where I talked about one way to help with this. I'd encourage you to check it out, but the basic idea is you take the time to explain the code like you were trying to teach it to someone else. You can see the github repo where I do this here. It's basically using the Feynman Technique:
https://github.com/MichaelGame-Dev/explaining_code
Personally, I found this to be a big help for me to understand what the code actually means to me, why it's important, and I think that has really helped me get past that initial beginner stage where you finish a tutorial and you're like, "now what do i do?" If you do a tutorial as you wait for the jam, consider doing this after it or during it.
I plan to stream my dev process during the jam and make a video after it, if you want to check me out, see my channels here
As a final note, I really appreciate the rules set and timeframe. As someone with a full time job and trying to make their first commercial game, a weekend/72 hour game jam can burn me out a bit. I also literally fought with 3d models for like 6 hours on Saturday during GGJ and it kinda torpedoed the whole project when I had to re-do the game in 2d on Sunday. Just ran out of time.