I learned the hard way that videos don't play on webgl builds unless one links to a video hosting server... After staying awake all night animating an intro and outro by hand. I had to upload a windows version instead, because I wasn't gonna let all that work go to waste.

learned a lot on dragging, gettin mouse position, sfx adjustment, webgl build and so on. it was really helpful. And still didnt understand why onmousedrag worked on editor but not on build. I changed ton to make it work on build.

This was my second jam, for some reason even though it was 10 days (and not 48h like my first jam) and I picked a simpler idea, I had a much harder time this time around! It may be because for the first jam I devoted my entire weekend to it and had no other duties, whereas the last two weeks have been extremely busy (I am a PhD student and I have teaching duties, and my undergrads needed revision sessions before their exams, so it was quite chaotic). This has really shown me the importance of making a timeline, prioritizing features, and setting distraction-free time to work on my games! More time does not necessarily mean the result will be better. Also, I started off being a lot more organized and purposeful in my architecture, but as the time went by and I felt the pressure, I started writing spaghetti code and... I came to regret it, I have to say! This is a great way to remember: do it nice, or do it twice!

Well, I think the most important thing I learned from this jam is just how much I can get done when I really put my mind to it and I'm under a deadline. As far as game dev goes, I learned (or more like relearned) concepts with Unity's animator that I forgot about. The last two things on your list also resonated with me as well with the canvas and organizing code in a neat and efficient way. There were some things that I wanted to change but ended up couldn't do it quite so easily because I hadn't planned it out quite so well. Created some wonky workarounds to make things work, but if I continue with this project I definitely will be refactoring a good amount of code.

I think as far as art goes, this jam has really made me want to get serious about learning pixel art. I think I made the best use of the assets that I had, but I wish everything had a uniform art style. I would love to create nice art assets to go along with games that I make in the future.

For me, the most important thing was proving myself that I could do it. Another important lesson was to know my skills limitations (for now, there's alway room to improve) and think of ways to work with them. Keeping the project organized helps a ton when making any change, not only in the code, but also in level, files and assets.

Since I've started learning UE recently, I wanted to make my game on it even with previous experiences with Godot and Unity (but haven't finished any game project till now). Man, it was a ride on learning several features UE5 has, material shaders, post processing shaders or trying out different ways to craft my levels trying to keep it light run.

A phrase that I heard on some videos, "kill your darlings". Learned the meaning in it the hard way, there were lots of interesting ideas in my mind. But there was another lesson, manage the scope of the project. Will it improve the game's experience? Is there enough time to make it happen? Once implemented, where will it be applied? Will it break previous made game sections?

On the level design field, a puzzle in my game has a problem that I later found out. The goal isn't always on player's sight, so the player can solve the puzzle and still feel like is stuck in that puzzle bc isn't seeing the exit.

On the graphics, I learned that keeping a smaller color palette would make my art more consistent as I'm not skilled in the field. But that may not be the case for others.

I would like to apologise to everyone that played my game about the musics. Had to start from 0 to composer in a short time. I mean from zero as I did not even had a clear notion of how the tempo would influence the music.

Lastly, it's okay if the game project isn't the best. Every game had flaws, learn from them to improve.

This was my first jam/game, so I learned quite a bit. I think the most positive thing I learned was getting more familiar with Unity as I went. Things were getting simpler to figure out as I progressed. For example getting characters to face the right direction as they moved took a long time (done earlier in dev), but adding audio to the different events ended up taking minutes (towards end). My goals before starting were:

• Get proficient with tile maps - So so success. Still can’t get them to do exactly what I want with the rules.
• Tile map collisions - mostly successful. Bullets still go through walls.
• Figure out animation for sprites - success
• Audio - much easier than expected. Might try spatial next time.
• UI Elements - was the last thing I did. Will likely start there on future projects.
• Menus, loading screens, etc. - Ran out of time

Was a fun week!

This was my first game jam, and one thing I learned from this jam is how much can be done in such a short time if you work diligently, and make the time for it.

Game design is a field i'd really love to work in, but life always seems to get in the way of getting work done, so it's been a while since I've put so much effort into a project. Even though the graphics and sound are very basic, I'm quite happy with how my game turned out overall!

It's hard to believe that just 2 weeks ago I was coming up with game ideas for each possible theme while joking around with a coworker, and now I'm here having finally put out a full game. It's the jumping off point I needed to start taking my future career seriously and stop treating it like a side hobby.

I learned that maybe Unreal isn't the best engine to use for game jams.

Cant be played in the browser and just over 500mb for a very simple game, yes I'm sure that could be made somewhat smaller but I would expect more browser games to be played then ones that need to be downloaded.

I've learned that taking a week off isn't long enough, I needed an extra week after the jam just to play, rate and comment on everyone's entries! I only got through 106 and I'm thoroughly burned out.
I've also learned that what started as just an idea of something that could represent my ideas in the time we had, may have potential for a full-length real game. Maybe I'll change my mind when I get my ratings but from the feedback, people seem to have appreciated, if not entirely enjoyed, my game.  Originally I considered doing a "remastered" version with the art and some features that got dropped. Now I'm considering if I can develop it into something commercial

As this was my first attempt to make an actual game I definitely learned a lot from doing this - while my game is very different from what I pictured at the start of the jam, I'm still really pleased with it!  My game was made in Unity, and while I'd followed a few tutorials before, this was the first time I was having to piece things together myself.

My main takeaways were:

• Learning the basics of importing models and animations.  I spent a good few hours just figuring out how to get the rigging/avatar importing properly, to say nothing of how to trigger the animations on cue!  I also really want to learn the basics of making my own sprites/models, but that's a whole other rabbit hole to go down...
• Getting to know the different types of colliders and physics systems.  I managed to make a really impressive special effect where the walls and features of my level broke apart and drifted off into the abyss, which would have been great if only I had meant to!
• Focus on making the bare minimum of a game that can be played from beginning to end - it was so easy to get distracted by trying to add a particular feature or keep on tuning it!  In the end, I'm really glad I scaled things back to tick off the core gameplay ideas as otherwise I would have run out of time with only a half finished game.  It's much easier to add content/features into a functional game than it is to try to make a game out of a collection of features, especially with that deadline looming!

All in all, I had a great time!  I'm also really impressed by the submissions of the other entrants - I've seen some amazing games this week, and I'm already looking forward to my next gamejam!