Hey, all! This is my first jam... I'm planning to learn a lot about expectations around time management on this. I committed my Saturdays to working on the game. My work week is essentially Su-Fri. And I'm a father and husband. Whatever else I can give is going to the game. I still had to get out and kick the soccer ball around with my kid yesterday.

Just as I'm stepping out for a walk and getting some sunshine, I'm wondering what is everyone else doing to keep some balance in their lives.

Does it help push out a better product in the end? Does it actually give you a little more drive to take a break?

I basically have worked on the game only when I have the time. Which for me is in the evenings and during my daughter's nap during the day. I probably have a bit more time than most since I don't work. But of course, I have other obligations to take care of and spend time with the wife. 

I went pretty hard the first night staying up until about 2AM which was a huge mistake. Felt really out of it the next day and decided to just stick to what my schedule already is. Maybe I can afford a bit more time to put to it, but I think if I stay focused using the time I have wisely I should be able to make something for submission.

I'm like you though. This is my first jam as well so I wanted it primarily to be a learning experience for me for time management and game dev in general. Today, I re-scoped my whole project and turned it into something a lot more manageable. I already have working prototype in just a few hours which is a lot more than what I could say with the previous project I was working on. So, I'm fairly happy with the progress I made today. Hopefully, this progress can be maintained and then I can finish it by the deadline.

But to actually answer your question, yeah, I think it helps to have balance and to give yourself a break when you need it. You definitely don't want to burn out or make unhealthy decisions that would make you feel like crap (like staying up way too late). Good luck in the jam! Hope to play your game at the end.

Here's what last year looked like for me - and I hope you'll indulge me, it's turned into a bit of a ramble. No kids, but high pressure project at work demanding some evening work so only a couple of hours available on weekdays although on the last week I somehow found more time. The Jam started on a Friday but I didn't begin until the Sunday (23rd). For the last week I had roughly planned what I was going to work on on a daily basis - this probably saved me after I had a disaster on the day before the deadline... Worth noting that last year's jam was 14 days rather than this year's 10 days.

• 23/05/2021: Added URP, Dungeon Crawl tiles, created first tilemaps, 2D Lighting
• 24/05/2021: Player Shooting, physics
• 25/05/2021: Add navmesh AI
• 26/05/2021: Characters have health, enemies drop gold
• 27/05/2021: Game loop
• 28/05/2021: Friday night (nothing got done)
• 29/05/2021: Monsters, fix physics issues
• 30/05/2021: Improved movement.
• 31/05/2021: Make enemies shoot (2 hours)
• 01/06/2021: Added player controlled light, UI for health / coins, scene linking (1 hour light, 4 hours UI)
• 02/06/2021: Game loop - exit to next level, gameplay fixes (4 hours)
• 03/06/2021: [plan] Audio / UI / Dialogue, Levels
• [deadline day] 04/06/2021: [plan] Launch!

The 03/06/2021 did NOT go according to plan - I spent the entire evening trying to get WebGL exporting working. I was still having it fail up til 3am. Got none of the planned tasks done. Honestly, I thought I was going to have to give up on submitting. Fortunately I had taken the Friday off, so I slept on it, imported all my work to a new project, and by lunchtime the export finally worked. So polishing went out the window, along with the dialogue system - I had less than six hours to get everything together: threw together 3 more levels (only had one at this point!), all the sounds / music and all the little things I'd missed.

Re-reading the above, and with increased obligations this year... Frankly I am well behind schedule ;) In general I was grateful for a patient Mrs Christh throughout last year's jam. I have a bundle of joy this year and visitors staying Thursday thru Monday so honestly I'm not sure what my end result will be - but I need to plan and also not burn out if I do decide to set designated work hours. I guess my main suggestion would be to take care of yourself but also to add some slack into your schedule in case you have a disaster... And keep copies of your project folders / use source control.