Hello! This is my first time participating in a gamejam and the first time I'm making a game in general! When thinking about the theme "cycles", the literal first thing that came to mind was laundry machine cycles (for some reason), and that's where I got the inspiration for the game!
First thing I did was open my sketchbook and write/draw some of the concepts I wanted to implement into a game. The plan is to have a point and click game with a few mini games, but we'll see if I stick to that idea.

Day 1

After I sketched ou my initial idea, I started drawing the washing machine sprites, and here is one of them

I was experimenting a bit with Krita's textures and I found one that I really liked and the plan is to have majority of the assets in this style. It is a bit messy with all the shaky lines and coloring that goes outside of the lines, but I think that gives it a cute, almost childish vibe. I spent the rest of the day familiarizing myself with Godot, which is my engine of choice.

To be honest, I am really worried about implementing the mini games. I do have a background in programming so I have a base idea on how I should go about making them, but it is my first time ever making a game and I am really unfamiliar with Godot. If anyone knows a more suitable game engine I could use for this type of game, please do tell me so!

Day 2

Day two was mostly me drawing assets and the background, I didn't have much time to learn Godot, but I started refining some of the minigame ideas I had!

Since I don't have much to add, here is the most anticipated (by no one) part of the game -  the cat (which you may or may not be able to pet in the final version of the game :))! 

That's pretty much all I wanted to update everyone on, sorry for such a short devlog!

Day 3 & 4

Got sick so unfortunately I had no time to work on the game ]:

Day 5

I finally started working in Godot! It is a bit challenging, because Godot 4 came out pretty recently so there aren't many Godot 4 specific tutorials, but I've come across Clear Code's tutorial - The ultimate introduction to Godot 4 and it really helped me get introduced to the basics of Godot! I try not to rely on tutorials so much, because I don't want to get too dependant on them, so I'm figuring things out as I do them. For now I haven't done anything major, just imported and placed all of the assets, made the shaking animation (which happens when the washing machine is turned on) and that is pretty much it.

I will probably need to pick up my pace because I already lost two days due to being sick and since I'll be travelling on the 4th of August, I won't be able to do anything during those final days of the jam. Tomorrow I'll finally begin working on one of the mini games.

(Early update on) Day 6

I was working a bit on the minigame art, which looks pretty janky now, but if I end up having some time left, I'll redo it, here is a screenshot of the minigame scene:

Note - I placed the dirt marks by hand, I have yet to program them  being placed randomly as the minigame starts (as well as choosing a random piece of clothing). Looking at it right now, the background of the minigame (which is supposed to be the inside of the washing machine) looks low quality, but I just wanted to make it blurry so that it doesn't take much attention from the actual minigame, so I might go back and fix that later! As you can see, the plan for the minigame is for the player to select the bubble option and click on all the dirt marks so that they turn into little bubble spots, like the one in bottom right. After that, they select the water option and wash off the bubble spots and that's it for the minigame! Since the minigame in it of itself isn't difficult, when the other minigame(s) and a time constraint (which will get faster as the game goes on) get added, it will become more challenging!

Last thing I did today is not directly game related - but it will help me with its development and that is...... A schedule! Yeah! I haven't had one until now and I ended up just doing whatever I felt like doing, a.k.a I pretty much just did the art lol! Only thing I'd like to share from my schedule is this:

This is a reminder that I really needed. Even though I barely made anything so far, this jam started feeling like a chore which is the last thing I wanted to happen. With two days lost due to being sick I felt way behind everyone. I had to really sit down and think why I applied to this jam and remember all the goals I had set for myself - or, just one goal, and that is to make a complete game. So even though I'll have less time than everyone (because I'm going on a trip on the 4th woohoo) and even though I'm already behind, I'm ready to submit a somewhat functional game.

I will take it slow and easy as I always have, but also try my best and lastly - have fun while doing it! :)

Any recommendations on how I could improve the game or suggestions on how to make the art better are welcome :)

Day 7

Hello hello, we are officially halfway done with the jam! I hope everyone's games are coming along nicely. As for me, I finished the first little bit of the game, a.k.a the first "minigame". The reason why I put the quotation marks is because the minigame is just pushing one button - choosing between 3 types of washes (gentle, normal and EXTREME wash). Each batch of laundry gets its own type of wash which the player is supposed to match in this "minigame". Failing to do so will result in timeloss and the player will have to sit through the 3 second long laundry cycle (jam theme mentioned!11!!!1) and time is going to be very valuable if player wants to beat their previous scores. I also started the second minigame, which is an actual minigame, described in gamelog above. Oh, the game is also loopable!! (which totally did not happen accidentally)

Since we're at the halfway point I started reflecting a bit. With only less than a week left I kept having thoughts like  what would I have done differently? Well first of all I'd use nodes that are not just Sprite2D nodes. Yes, I used Sprite2D nodes for everything. No, I didn't want to learn how to use the other nodes. Also I wish I organized my code differently. You know how you can add scripts to any node? And how the most logical thing would be to have somewhat of majority of the code in one of the parent nodes? Well, silly old me put most of my code in the washing machine asset script. Even the minigame code, not related to that asset. 

Now, I'm not saying my code is Yandere Dev level bad, but it is bad. But oh well, as the most experienced programmers say: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As most of you an see, I stopped updating the devlog and I haven't submitted the game and that is because I was too busy with the trip I talked about in some of the logs, I had to do some extra traveling before it so I haven't had access to my laptop. It is a shame I couldn't finish the game in time, but I'm happy with the idea I had and the progress I made. I wish to release the game outside of the jam, so if any of you are interested in playing it, be on the look for it! I hope everyone is happy with their first jam and the game they've made and I look forward to playing some of the games from the jam!