hi, after 2 years of doing unfinished projects this was a good experience for me.

i realized i still have the power to work on a simple idea and make it as good as possible even in 48 hours. now that a few people played my games and had positive comments, i'm more inspired to make new projects and even make money out of it.

please share your experiences with every one.

by the way this is my game if you wanted to try and rate, i'll be glad. thanks!

[one hand shooter]

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462032

Honestly this Jam was super fun for me. At first we were struggling with Unity but once the game started taking shape, everything got much faster. I haven't ever taken part in one of these before, so it was super satisfying to be able to finish the game, specially since I had to stay up all night to finish it the last day. nevertheless I had tons of fun, and it was nice working with my team!

My biggest take away is probably how important it is to focus on the most relevant and basic aspects of the game firstly. I'm pretty sure we wasted hours getting a ladder to work perfectly and we could have probably done more if we just let it be slightly janky. Now I know to be carefull with that for my next time!

This weekend was awesome! So a thank you GMTK

This is my first game, and my first game jam.  I've always been a bit scared to start on a project like this with no knowledge of game engines or best practises when approaching a task like this. This weekend forced me to hit it head on and give it a go.   

I did the whole game in JavaScript as I'm a Web developer and that's what I know best.  I focused on a game with only one input and made a 1v1 jousting game. 

Built up a lot of confidence and will definitely enter again next year! 

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462189

(you may need a partner to play with you) 

I've never really had much time to work on a project, and I often find it hard to come up with ideas, particularly within a time limit, so I was apprehensive about joining a game jam. However, this jam helped me greatly with my struggles, as the time pressure gave me motivation to keep thinking, and iron out the bugs, in order to meet the deadline.

I'm slightly disappointed that I wasn't able to make a game with graphics, using something like unity, as I attempted, but struggled with the artwork. Yet I am still quite proud that I managed to get a submission ready in time, and would greatly appreciate any ratings and feedback you could provide to a budding game developer.

My Game: https://brownseededbread.itch.io/onlyoneday

I wasn't originally planning on joining the jam, but when I saw the theme announcement, I started having ideas and found something that I could do without too much strain. After about 8 hours, I had something I was happy with and let a friend playtest it. I realized that I wasn't finished AT ALL as he didn't understand it, so I spent another day just conveying the concept more clearly. I'm pretty proud now though :)

here it is: https://fahps.itch.io/one-color-dungeons

This was my first game jam so it was quite daunting at first. I made my game around a platformer where you can only press each button once per stage. It's called Broken Robot and I think it turned out pretty well.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462219

Good job! This was also my first jam as well! I had a very fun time creating and implementing all of the components of my game!

I think this was the first game jam I've done where I judged the scope well. Usually I try to get mechanics done on day one which I did. And when it came to content and art... Well, I did not have any! So I got to pop this one in the can quite early.

The hardest part was the level generation algorithm, making a tetris board one-step from a line that looked organic was harder than I expected. And I had to bug fix it after my first post-upload play because it generated impossible levels for the I-block!

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/460801

My story is the same as many of yours: This is my first game jam, and my first completed project, and I am very proud. Even just seeing some of the positive comments on the game that I made on my own is enough to make my week. I'm so glad I joined, and plan to do it again.

My Game, if anyone is interested: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462323.

I actually made a video covering development from start to finish!

The jam was certainly tricky but well worth the effort!

So I was originally going to make a mixology game where the bartender can only make one drink that doesn't cause their patron's head to fall off because of an ancient curse - the only issue was I woke up on the final morning of the jam with a six hour shift that day to find all my files had been corrupted. 

I nearly gave up but when I got to work I had another idea for a crafting game where the objective is to get down to one item rather than up to as many as possible, and as soon as I got back from work I put together Decrafted, a game which looks okay, functions decently and I think the premise is actually stronger than my original idea lol 

The main achievement I take away is that I didn't give up even though the odds were way against me submitting anything at all and more to the point submitting something which I think is actually kind of decent for the amount of time I ended up with lol: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463986 

48 hours was really tight. My goal was to have a polished game, and I think I'm on the right path! 

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462421

This was actually our first jam! We didn't even have any finished projects before this weekend, it was probably the most exhausting couple of days of our lives, and i loved every second of it! (well, the first 10 hours or so were kinda hard, cuz we decided to fully scrap the first game idea and star over)

Here's our little main character!
Would love if you guys could give it a try!
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463638

48 hours really forces you to make choices! "Infinite time" is the worst things a dev (or any creator) can have!

Every game I make outside of Jams I really want to do ALL THE THINGS! Sound, Music, Art, UI, and I always end up with half projects that aren't even playable.In Jams, I use assets like crazy! I learn how to find matching assets, how to tweak the shaders so that they look similar, how people structure the assets, etc!

If you want to take a look (I only did code, everything else is free assets from Unity's store):

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/460908

I've messed with Pico-8 a little before now (practically got it a week before the Jam was announced), but despite some messing around this was my first time seriously trying to make an original game from scratch with it. Honestly didn't prep as much as I'd liked, and I'd practically written-off participating in this.
But. The theme was interesting, I had a few ideas, and I figured why not give it a go?
Somehow managed to focus well on the core - very tempting to want to add things like item drops, upgrades, a boss fight and so, but honestly bugfixing took up way more time than I ever mentally allocated. And oh jeez so many bugs ^^;
It's almost hillarious how badly things can go wrong~

I think one of the hardest, almost counter-intuitive things I found, was knowing your code is bad but having to generaly leave it as is: if it works, don't fix it, there isn't time. Does mean the source is painful to look at, much less decypher; honestly I'd describe it as brute-forcing the result, even if it does at least work.
Albeit it was worth redoing one of the bullet vectors at least; hyper-velocity projectiles are no joke!

Overall, I definitely didn't allocate my time as well as I could but...
Hey, I made something, I had a lot of fun doing it. Honestly, I'm actually fairly proud of what I achieved in the time frame with my ability (which is a rarity I have to say~)

Just wish I'd added a title screen.
Ah well... best not mess up something that works at the very end after all~!

This jam was my first attempt at making a platformer, and also the first one where I had somebody helping me out which was nice as well.

I learned a bit about how to do '3d' or directional sound which was fun too.  It was also the first time I've made a tileset for a game.

Like most people here, I had more plans for the game but simply didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted. Nonetheless, I'm happy with how it turned out.

If anybody is interested, here is my game: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463103

I've learned RPG Maker from scratch over the course of the jam, going from struggling with the map editor to low-level hacking the engine's undocumented features to implement an encounter management system that has stumped more experienced RPG Maker devs on the forums. :D Also, at my previous jams, I have tended to make artsy mechanics-as-metaphors games, but now I've made an entire content-driven game with proper scoping and planning. :-)

My game (if anyone is into weird JRPGs): https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461219

I had a hell of a lot of fun. Struggled with gimbal lock for almost a day until I decided to use quats in C++ instead.

I usually work in C++ anyway, but for prototypes I often start out with Blueprints (using UE4 of course) and then convert to code. 

Same applies for Game Jams. Lesson learned -> Start with coding directly, safe myself some headaches due to unexposed functionality. 

But very happy with the result!

Still managed to watch F1 this weekend without working on the Jam. 

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462667

Yeah, similar to you, this is the first time a project of mine has resulted in something resembling a complete product. Still very far to go though.

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461216 As you can tell by the complete lack of graphics.

Like for many of you it was the first jam for me as well.

At the beginning I was very nervous, I had no idea what to make and I worked in solo, so I don't have anybody to rely on their ideas either.
Then I was thinking about a negative battle royal (where the goal is to die as soon as possible, and the last one standing is the looser). Then I realized, I have no idea how to do multiplayer... and I work alone... and I only have two days... so I passed the idea... :D

Then I started doodling in Godot, made a few prototypes. A basic top down shooter was born. Ok, that's a good start. Now I need to make it to fit the theme. My first idea was to use a bow and arrow, and you would always have to pick up the arrow after you shoot. It was interesting, but I didn't quite like it.
After this I changed the concept of moving to follow the mouse (before that it was a classic WASD move system). Now the game only used one button for shooting, and the player always followed the cursor. That's when it started to get interesting. I thought, what if I can alternate between moving and shooting with the same button? Press for shoot, hold for move (and swipe for change weapons, - I cut this part out from the final game, but it will be back in a future release), so I changed the bow to a gun and my game was born.
After this I made a small dungeon (at this point there was only few hours left from the jam) added zombies, keys and doors, almost broke the whole game, added doors and keys again. And then the lights. I never used the lights in Godot before, so I have no idea how they work, but I really needed them for the atmosphere, so I jumped into the docs and read through all of them. I still used a lot of hacks because I was to lazy to implement them in the 'right' way (or just had no idea how else could I do...), but in the end it somehow became a whole. :)

Long story short I had a lot of fun, and learned a lot, and from the few responses I got until now I feel, that it worth it. Thank you! :)
Here is my game: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462640

I've finished my first ever game. There were attempts towards it before but I got bored really quick and dropped those projects. And this was also my first platformer which told me that platformer mechanics are not as easy as it looks.

I don't usually manage two-day/48-hour jams because depression and executive dysfunction stink real bad and constantly cause me to get nothing done. So I made up a really simple game - doing the code, art, and sound by myself - focusing on doing one thing really well, and just juiced the heck out of it. Uploaded it JUST before the itch crash incident and have since spent the rest of my time playing, rating, and drawing real bad fan art of others' games. I know how bad it can feel when you put a lot of effort into something, and nobody even seems to care. Even just being acknowledged can mean a lot.

Speaking of bad fan art:

This is my first ever game jam and  I usually have a hard time completing the games I make that I'm surprised at the result I had at the end of the 48 hours. My game is called One Shot In The Chamber, a wave based survival game where you must fight off hordes of enemies with the catch being, you have only one bullet. Fortunately, the bullet is magic and you can summon it back to you or teleport to it. Using this unique ability, you must survive as long as possible in the chamber. Here is a screenshot of the game and the link to the game page: https://mark-auman.itch.io/one-shot-in-the-chamber

Only takeaway so far is to build a browser game to get higher ratings in an overcrowded game jam

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/431948

I learned just how deep these mechanics are, I had them planned for another project i was working on and i wanted to see how far i could go, turns out i didn't scratch the surface in 48 hours! if i really want to explore them, my current project might need to be way bigger...

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/462355

This was my first game jam so at first I was super nervous when I started brainstorming after the theme was given. I had fun developing the game but it got really stressful the last hour of the jam, because my game had some sort of gamebreaking bug that showed up only after build. I managed to submit it almost last second. I had so much fun though and will for sure join more jams to come!

https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/463426