Any advice for a first-time game maker?

I'm very excited to make my first 2d game and to see what you all come up with for the jam.

cyps nailed it! 

As someone very new to jams, I thought I’d offer two pieces of advice, with my real world experiences…

1) Don’t let small details hold up your progress. It’s so easy to get stuck obsessing over little details that aren’t going to have a major impact to the player. While that may be a good thing for a big project, it’s probably a detriment in something where your time and scope are so limited. Focus on little details only if they really matter or y everything else is good enough .

- I spent time picking and applying different wood textures for my game,  just for it to end up looking horrible anyway, and to find out the textures were too big and causing all sorts of issues with lag and upload size. If I’d stuck with 1 texture it would’ve saved me a ton of time that I could’ve used fixing actual issues  

2) The easy but messy answer might be superior to the hard but elegant answer. Since you have limited time, you don’t always have to go with the best technique. A quick, non-expandable design might be preferable to one that is better but would take longer to implement.

- I got stuck on an enemy spawner. I had a method that worked, but wasn’t easily expandable. I spent hours improving it, but the user would never know and I ended up not having time to use the expandability anyway!

I might not be an experienced vet but I do remember what i regret doing in my 1st couple game jams:

• setting expectations too high
• not figuring out a temporary core gameloop or ending (waves/cutscene, something that makes the game not boring too, endless mode can be a post story thing)
• procrastinating (please make some sort of list & check it off. You have a whole month but I'm sure you also have a life)
• focusing on small details (those'll matter later when your game needs some extra spice but make a prototype 1st & see where you wanna take the idea)
• trying to make everything yourself (if its not broke & it looks aight feel free to use it, theres no rules stopping you. Find a balance between your own stuff though so it doesn't just look like an "asset flip"
• using too many tutorials (if your really stuck on something it makes sense, but if your entire game is built off the back of Brackeys your not going to know how to fix anything & will find yourself in "tutorial hell." Only you can (somewhat) understand your spaghetti code lmao c: