As this was my first attempt to make an actual game I definitely learned a lot from doing this - while my game is very different from what I pictured at the start of the jam, I'm still really pleased with it! My game was made in Unity, and while I'd followed a few tutorials before, this was the first time I was having to piece things together myself.
My main takeaways were:
- Learning the basics of importing models and animations. I spent a good few hours just figuring out how to get the rigging/avatar importing properly, to say nothing of how to trigger the animations on cue! I also really want to learn the basics of making my own sprites/models, but that's a whole other rabbit hole to go down...
- Getting to know the different types of colliders and physics systems. I managed to make a really impressive special effect where the walls and features of my level broke apart and drifted off into the abyss, which would have been great if only I had meant to!
- Focus on making the bare minimum of a game that can be played from beginning to end - it was so easy to get distracted by trying to add a particular feature or keep on tuning it! In the end, I'm really glad I scaled things back to tick off the core gameplay ideas as otherwise I would have run out of time with only a half finished game. It's much easier to add content/features into a functional game than it is to try to make a game out of a collection of features, especially with that deadline looming!
All in all, I had a great time! I'm also really impressed by the submissions of the other entrants - I've seen some amazing games this week, and I'm already looking forward to my next gamejam!