Hey you guys, congrats on finishing and submitting! A bit late, but how did the jam go for everyone? Anybody trying to update real quick like I am haha?
It went really well for us, I think! We had to cut some neat ideas to make something that had a beginning and an end, but we hit the ground running and had a blast working on our project. The soundtrack was a genre I've never worked in before, so that was a fresh experience for me.
How did it go for you?
It went pretty well for me! I more or less finished early, with a couple of days to do some promo art, cleanup, and prep the game page! (Usually I do all that stuff at 3am the night it's due...) Having Facemelting Solos handle the sound design and create original music took a huge load off too, and also really boosted the quality of the final game. I think my wife is glad this is over though, as I pretty much locked down in front of my computer for 2 weeks. Thank goodness she had FF7R and Animal Crossing to play in the meantime, hehe.
The only downside is now I have the post jam blues... not sure what to work on next. Still feeling pretty motivated, but I really like the community of a jam to keep me hyped.
How's everyone else feeling? I saw I lot of really good entries! Everyone that made it to the finish line should be proud!
The last couple of days have been very stressful and I'm glad I was able to release my visual novel. This is a new experience for me. Due to the fact that I was deeply immersed in the plot, I did not calculate the time for programming haha. It will be a good lesson for the future. I'd like to finalize my game, but I'll take a break for a couple of days. It was fun!
Those who survived to the end, respect!
I had a lot of fun with this jam! It was really intense, though, and I spent way more time and energy on it than I thought I would.
I'm still trying to decompress and relax, almost a week later. That's pretty normal for me, to be honest. It doesn't help that there's a ton of stuff I kinda neglected while I was jamming this time around.
I think the thing that surprised me the most was people doing their first games for this jam. I think every one of them was pretty good- maybe not perfect but if the creators hadn't mentioned they were just starting out I wouldn't have realized. My first game was horrendous. It had about three lines of text, stupid gameplay, a garbage "storyline", no graphics, and it was made in a DOS program so you can't even play it anymore. Oddly enough, I actually found this jam when I was checking to see if there were any "remake your first game" jams going on.
This jam was a lot of fun!
I was in community quarantine when I discovered the jam, so I put in a lot of time working on my game to take my mind off of being stuck at home. I liked how my game turned out, and I want to work on a finished post-jam version. This jam got me really in the zone when it came to creating stuff. I've only ever made games for jams, and I've never done a finished product, so I'm looking forward to working on my jam game more.
I've been really on and off about whether I would actually finish the jam or not during the entirety of it. I started on a pretty joke-y idea and just wanted to use it as an excuse to pratice stuff I was rusty or curious about: namely character design with skeletal animation, drawing backgrounds and music. Whether I finished the actual game or not wasn't a priority for me, as long as I learned a good amount about those things. I really wanted to stay chill during this jam.
In the end I only did one of those things and it took about a week of the jam, but I am very satisfied with how the characters turned out so it's okay. I spent a lot more time than I expected on how to make cutscenes, but at least I learned how to do it, so even if it's not something I set out to do, it's a win in my book.
I'm pretty satisfied of this jam, which is my first jam. A lot of good entries, and I could post something as well, even though I did not finish what I wanted.
The theme inspired after I failed my last project. I could work on something that don't take too long. I'm happy to have submitted,, but next time I'll hone my skills before doing a game jam. Maybe I'll try another engine.