I spent the whole week planning, drawing sprites, thinking about the game, changing my mind... playing zelda (they should ban nintendo from releasing magnificent games in game jam weeks hahaha).

When finally, two days ago, I decided to mount everything in GB Studio, everything slowly collapsed, until I realized that I should have learned to use GB Studio sooner.

Lessons learned:

1. Learn to use the tools first: to understand their limitations and plan with that in mind. just because something seems "easy" doesn't mean it will be when you're desperate for a deadline.

2. If you know how to do things one way really well, maybe it's better to go with this: I'm an experienced programmer and I like to program even the most silly details. GB Studio is great, but not for me, at least as it is. I should have done it by hand using a programmer's tool. But that's me, you maybe the opposite. The important thing is to do it in the way that is most comfortable for you.

I look forward to hearing your stories and can't wait to play your submissions.

Cheers!

I came very, VERY close to scrapping my project, specially when I realised I had miscalculated and was one whole day off-schedule but at the end I chose to just cut a huge amount of content and make a smaller, more possible game. Part of the appeal for me was to get something done, at any cost really, to not miss the deadline. It was my first time doing a jam so I understand where you're coming form and I had a lot of the same feelings, down to playing some ToTK and then snapping back to reality and turning it off to continue working on the game. I wish you better luck next time! For me it worked to try to map out the whole week in chunks and adhere to it ruthlessly to avoid getting caught up in small-picture stuff (I also have a tendency to fixate on what you call "silly details"). My two cents!

What really helped me finish was that I intended to only work for two days on my game and just upload whatever gets done in that time frame. But when testing the game I liked it much more than I had anticipated and decided to keep working on it. At that point I already had a functioning game but still had 4.5 days left, which was more than enough to add more content. I think I would do it the same way again if I ever participated in another game jam. If I don't enjoy playing my own game after two days, it would not make much sense to keep going. And if I like it, there is plenty of time for adding more content and polishing the game.