I'm a maths student who started using the pure functional language Elm for game development.
While I was programming one game over another, I notice that I could abstract away the core of the game into its own game engine.
This game jam was not only my first, but i also wanted to use it to stress test my engine. I wanted to focus on that for the next two days. At least that was the plan.
We'll as life can be I meet a girl just a few days prior, and so I decided I would spend more time with her than programming the game.
So I started writing very generic stuff while I was waiting for the topic to drop: A game editor, a very simple way to change the behaviour of objects and so on. The actual Game Jam began at midnight and the next day I would be with my date... well the date went a bit over time and so, at the end i just had 3 more hours left before the jam ended and still no proper game yet. But the game editor did its job. I had implemented the mechanics in about 30minutes and spend two more hours for the levels.
https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2019/rate/461762
All in all, I could test my game engine and even add new features like an object manager or a game editor to it. I would call it a success. (also I got the girl, so that part of the story also turned out perfect)