Welcome anyone who is reading this page! My name is Dew and i joined this gamejam... for a very important reason as far as i am concerned:

I was always fascinated by videogames and their makings,  and by coding and computers in general, and i think i would have always liked to make a game or learn a coding language... the problem? I could have said that if i was 14 or something, but instead i am 18 years old, so much time passed and i never really acted on my ambitions or dreams, i tried making a game or learn coding many times in the past, but i always ended up failing at the smallest objective i could try to achieve, this reflects also on other aspects of my life, its just that i felt that i never achieved anything in the whole 18 years i was alive, and i don't really expect this to change during the course of this jam, but let's stop with depressing stuff since this is no place for that, it was just an introduction to explain that i'm doing this mostly for myself to at least try and get a little better, sooo.

This Devlog will document the making of what hopefully end up being my first full fledged game! (And yes if you ask i didn't start earlier because i'm a lazyass - see above) i still have some things to figure out to even start and some giant lack of skills i will try to compensate little by little.

Sooo what do i know about the game in the makings? Welp i know it is gonna be a platformer, and it will involve a magic system of some kind, useful to beat enemies and interact with the environment, the real mystery is how it's gonna fit in with the "Cycles" theming, but i'm sure i'm gonna figure out something.

I do know that i am probably gonna be using Construct 2 to work at this, so first problem is gonna be to learn the "little coding" required to make the game.

Second huge problem is gonna be creating sprites, since i have no pixel art skills, even after trying different techniques, but i'm gonna try again i guess, and maybe end up using some free assets from the compiled list.

Third """"minor"""" problem is gonna be music and sound, i absolutely do not know how to create those either, but i think i'm gonna end up using some program for the sounds, and i actually do not know for the music... welp its not time for that.

Fourth problem is gonna be intertwined with the second one, level design, i have some ideas, but it's gonna be hard, still imma try around with what i can make with the tools i have.

Final thoughts: i believe this is gonna be a fully solo project, since i cannot stand the thought of other people bearing the weight of my own shortcomings, and i am probably scale down my game many times, but i'll try and keep you guys updated on progress... a thanks to anyone who stumbled onto this page at random and gave it some attention <3

Hey, good luck! You know, being 18,  you're not actually late getting into game dev at all. Plenty of very successful developers started much later. (I mean, I'm 23 and haven't finished a proper project yet). Don't be hard on yourself and I hope you learn a lot in the game jam!

Hey 18 is not late at all! A lot of my friends and coworkers started making games much later than that. If you find that you're struggling to finish everything though don't forget itch.io has a lot of asset packs available for you to use: https://itch.io/game-assets

Making your first game can be very difficult, but be sure to celebrate the small victories and know that everything you make will make it much easier to make games in the future. Wishing you the best of luck!

[Devlog #1] A rocky start

So... I'm back with more updates! 

First things first.... I switched from Construct 2 to Godot 4... and it's been... hard, Godot is not very easy for beginners, and even if I do have some experience programming, learning  game design as a whole, pixel art and level design while scripting with GDScript, documentation and tutorials at hand is very time consuming and.. slow... mainly because I'm pretty slow lol... but anyways here things I made! (very few).

HHere is the first level  I made to test stuff and work on core systems.... level design is gonna be one of my main concerns

Here is me making a projectile for the hero of this story to shoot (yea its bad) i'm gonna be remaking most of this stuff anyways... the program I used to make this is called Piskel and you can get it here! [https://www.piskelapp.com] its a browser based pixel art editor, but you can download it too for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Finally here is me adding a collision box to the bullet and trying to make it work (it took much longer then I anticipated and its only a skeleton for now.

That's pretty much all I managed to get to work for now... I know its not a lot lol... but its something I guess.

About the design direction for the game, I decided the game is gonna focus on the cycling of the moon phases, and probably the platforming or/and the mechanics are gonna be affected by it, I'm just not sure if I should change moon phases during the levels, maybe as a trigger for the player to achieve to keep going in the level, or if every level should have its own moon phase, it would probably be easier.

I'd like to have some bossfights for the game, even if I'll probably end up scrapping them because coding hard... but I'll surely try.

The protagonist as you could maybe see in the screenshots is a bunny mage in a hood with a purple aura named Ari... like my dead pet bunny I had when I was little :>

Aaaaaand that's it for this devlog... I hope to start working on basic enemies and level design as soon as possible, and again thanks so much to everyone commenting on this, giving me tips, or just checking out what this newbie is doing or has to say! Your input is much appreciated :3

Ohhh using moon phases for different mechanics is so clever! Honestly that idea alone sounds like a great scope for a jam game. I'm excited to more of your little bunny mage in motion!

[Devlog #???] Welp...

It is with great dismay that I announce that I will drop this Jam, after actually being confronted with my inability to implement basic enemy movement, hitboxes and platforming mechanics, a mental breakdown later I understood I could not meaningfully advance on this project, its... weird... its my fourth time trying to make a videogame, and my fourth time burning out really fast, but anyways... there will probably be a fifth and a sixth :>

Next time I'll maybe try on working on singular, ULTRA basic mechanics, and... make something? I don't know, I feel like I don't even have the most basic creative concept-creating muscle sometimes XD... if there is even gonna be a next time.

its a shame really, I've loved videogames since I was very very little and keep them in regard as a wonderful art form, but alas, "this stuff is too hard for my smol brain"

I hope everyone who perseveres and is learning can meet their expectations in time and even if they don't that their results may be a warming reminder of their learning experiences! Good luck to all the Jammers! Thanks everyone for the kind comments, you really kept me in here longer than I probably should have :>