Hi, congratulations to everyone for finishing the game jam!
This is the first weeklong game jam I have participated in. My previous experience either consists of 48 hour or 72 hour long game jams. In the past, I am barely finishing all of the mechanics to make a playable game by the end of the jam. This time, I found that since I completed the game components within the first 3 days, I can dedicate the rest of my time towards level design instead. These are some things that I realized:
1) Game design takes time. Initially, my partner and I thought that after we finished creating the game components, we can pump levels out. Instead, unique level design was hard to force and I had to go about my day until an idea comes to me. After that, polishing a level takes an hour or two!
2) Always make the game easier. As designers, we are spending so many hours with our game before our player even touches it. In my previous game jam, my brother told me he cannot beat it. Be careful with the difficulty!
3) Spend time on the tutorials. Connecting to the previous point, while we know our game inside and out (haha), our players don't! It surprises me that even though I spent extra effort communicating the game mechanics, it's still hard in the beginning. Note to self for the next jam.
4) Interact with the community and check out other games! In the past, I was so burnt out with finishing the project that I really forgot to engage with the other cool projects and rate the games. Not only did you put in a whole bunch of work, everyone else here did too! It's always incredible to me how many people do game jams :)
On that note, please put your game link here and I'll try to check them out!
My game is about swapping roles between a strategic General and a heroic Soldier to win the whole war :)