Hiya, it's me Mochii🎃 again :p. Hope you're all looking forward to the jam! In another post (here) I covered how to design, plan and prototype a game for your game jam and some tips which might help you. This time I'll be talking about the creation of your game and hopefully some of these will be useful! 

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🔹Tip 1 - Using Assets:

This might sound counterintuitive to the entire purpose of a jam but, just because a it requires you to make the entire game in an allotted time, doesn’t mean you have to make everything completely from scratch, especially if you’re working solo. As a developer, it’s incredibly difficult to be talented in every aspect of the process✨, just because of how many skills you need to create a fully polished video game and that’s the reason people work in teams, to share all of your talents and skills to make a good game in all aspects of design👥, but if you’re working solo it’s ok for some things to be less polished than others. Perhaps programming is your strong suit but you don’t normally do art🎨. There’s no shame in downloading some free 3D low poly assets if the jam permits it (which this jam does for the most part💖), as long as you give appropriate credit. The same applies for music, sfx and shaders. There are many resources online or people to talk to to help you improve in any part of being a game dev, but it’s ok to use premade assets every now and again, especially for jams!🍯

🔹Tip 2 - STAY HEALTHY (please):

Don’t dedicate your entire being to making the game, it’s not a way of life, more a fun challenge for you or your team👥! At first I also didn’t consider this a tip but a more experienced developer told me it was vital and it really makes sense✅. If you’re surviving on Fizzy drinks🍾/coffee☕/pizza🍕 you’ll make some mistakes that you otherwise wouldn’t make if you were more refreshed. So eat healthy, sleep enough💤🛌, drink lots of water🚰, have a decent amount of time for breaks, and if you’re ever stuck on anything I’ve found that just changing your environment is a great way to change your headspace and get fresh new ideas or problem solve better⛺. (Thanks mum for that tip it’s genuinely rly useful😁)

🔹Tip 3 - hAvE fUn:

And finally, the one that you were all expecting and will now proceed to face palm to, have fun! Don’t worry too much about your rating, I know it’s hard to do sometimes but don’t compare yourself to other game devs too much💻, because the winner of a jam normally has lots of unseen experience and a perhaps even a lifetime of knowledge that you can only accumulate through doing jams🧠. Just submitting a game is a massive achievement. everyone has scrapped jam games which they weren’t able to finish in time. Jams aren’t meant to create your dream game or big release title🏆. In some cases they do inspire full scale games, but in most cases they’re just a bit of fun for everyone, including yourself! Be proud of it, even if it’s not as fun as you imagined, or if it’s very short, people will give you feedback and you should embrace it all, treating it as an experience to learn more about game dev. 

If you don’t have fun doing it or aren’t proud, then it’s hard to stay open minded. Stay healthy, do your best and just enjoy it!✨

So those are all my jam tips. Hope this helps and enjoy the jam!💜

oo nicee

Good advice! Excited for the Jam to start :)

These are amazing tips! Unfortunately, I didn't follow tip 2. I've spent pretty much the entire week working on my game full time (when I'm not working on my thesis) and I haven't had much sleep. But I've been having so much fun and I'm so happy with my project that I don't regret working on it.
This might be one of the best things I've created in my life! You have no idea of how happy I am! Can't wait to finish it and share with the world haha. And I also can't wait to play the other submissions, which I'm sure are going to be amazing!