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Hey ! Thanks for your insights all ! It was very interesting. I edited my post to reflect the result and to synthesize most of the feedbacks we got. Was a great jam ! See you next time !

Hey,

Me and my mate Unrealvision thought it would be cool to do a retrospective about the jam.
It is a great way to list the things that we did great and the things we did wrong in order to improve for the next jam.
This is something we do at work (i'm a software engineer and he is a ui designer) and we encourage everyone to do the same (in this thread if you want).

Our game is SuperSugarSailor https://itch.io/jam/kenney-jam-2023/rate/2184272
It's about finding candies and the sacred sugar cane in the sweet sea.
Engine : Godot

This is our first game jam !

We did not "ultra try hard" the jam and slept and eat at our regular hours. Note that for our first game jam we did it in person and not remotely.

We worked approximately 19h. We started 3 hours late the jam and as I said we took time to eat and sleep at least 8h / day.
We were two so we had 38 man hour

Here is the time we spent (approximately) :

• Pure GameDev : 20h
• Being Stuck : 10h total
  
  • Shaders/Particules : 2h (we gave up)
  • Auto tiling / Tilemap (we partially gave up) : 2h
  • Git / Export : 6h (yeah... we should have read the godot gitignore recommendation before trying to merge our branches... + merge error)
• Musics making and searching for sea sounds : 3h
• Game export and testing (making sure that there was no obvious bugs and that the game worked on itchio) : 2h30
• Visuals / Itchio page :  1h30
• Game Design : 1h (hard to tell because it was often at the same time as the gamedev)

What we did wrong : No clear map / arrow or indication to known where the player is, Bad tutorial, We tried to do shaders without knowing anything about it

What we did well : We were not too stubborn and gave up on the things that were not that important as a whole (80/20 rule I think?). We managed time well and concentrated on the essential things with an initial to do list. We also knew we coulnd't do everything at the same time so we created some other tasks to do in // (music, visuals, UI etc)

We will try to do better next time :D

Now its your turn ( if you want ! ofc)

EDIT After the jam :
We are really happy with the results -> 68 overall, 22 theme, 100 gameplay, 143 visuals !
We clearly need to improve the visual aspect and global feel of the game, also the tutorial was causing problems and people where geeting lost.
Based on the feedbacks we got from you all, we created a list of the things that we plan to add to the game in order to challenge ourselves and improve ! Those in bold are more likely to be added as they seemed more "critical" based on your feedbacks and what we planned to do during the jam anyway.

Gameplay :

• Arrow indicating the spawn
• Ship rotation to be more fluid
• Ajout d'obstacles / mobs

• Better tutorial + needs to disapear after x seconds or after quitting the spawn
 

Améliorations graphiques/sons :

• Collision hit sound + small animation
• Moving sea
  
• Water trail 
• Some seagull
• Wind sound at max speed
• Some more island decoration
• Shadow for the ship and island
• Idle and moving animation for the ship 
• Volume slider

Hey ! This is the game we did Unrealvision and I.
Super Sugar Sailor
This is our first gamejam but I think we did pretty well and we managed to finish the jam with what we globally envisioned. We just had to skip some polishing (tutorial and particles/shaders globally).
We plan on improving the game with feebacks we received so feel free to say what you think about the game :)
Note : The rules are a bit unclear but you need to bring back the candies to the base to be granted more fuel !
https://luctum.itch.io/super-sugar-sailor

Hey, that's I neat game idea ! You used the assets well and the musics fits the ambiance. fyi, I found a bug where I could win the game without any tile placed by dragging the first path tile to both villages. Nice entry overall, cheers !

I like the concept and ambiance ! There is not so much game where you have to sell and buy things in the jam, so that's great ! If you plan to improve your game you could add some smoothing on the "snapping to planet" animation and to the ship's motor sound when it stops ! Cheers

Hey that's a nice little game, the movement and shooting feels great ! For some reason the fullscreen was not working properly for me.
Here's some feedback I have if you plan to improve the game. You could add a parallax effect to the stars in the background. To improve the movement further you could also add some inertia to the ship !
Nice entry, cheers :)

Hey really fun idea, and it seems pretty well executed too. In one instance I think I got the wrong map and could not place correctly the fortifications tiles, but other than that, that's great !

Hey I really enjoyed playing your game.
I really like the sound design haha, that's surprising but it does the job greatly ! The narrotor at the beggining and the fact that there is an intro is a great effort ! The game feel is pretty nice !
However I don't feel this is much of a exploration game (in a " world/culinary/ui discovery" sense) because we don't really have time to explore other than to retreive coins, but more of a search/survival one.
Nice job overall ! Cheers :)

thanks a lot !!

Hey, pretty nice game, I really like the idea of exploring around an island for it to be considered explored. Also, the red line on the map is a nice addition. The music fits pretty well the vibe of the game
The only feedback I could give you is to use an arrow clearly pointing in one direction on the minimap instead of an equilateral triangle ! Cheers !

Your game its pretty cute but it's also pretty hard ! Dragging animals to help me as plateforms is something i've never seen so it's pretty fun. Cheers

Haha that's a pretty unexpected game. The fact that's it has a leaderboard is also very unexpected. Its a bit hard to use I think but it's normal for a 48h made game, and I really like the idea nonetheless. Nice job !

Really nice work ! I think that's one of my favorite game so far. Really simple gameplay but really well executed. The little animations are great and the concept is pretty original for this theme.
The onlyfeeback I could give is that I think the music is a bit annoying after 2 or 3 levels because of its repetitiveness. Great job, cheers !

Really nice game, the flying car is a bit weird but why not ? haha
I really like the city layout I think you did a really great job. The car is enjoyable to maneuver however it is a bit hard to see where the package will be dropped.
Maybe it could be clearer with some kind of target indicator when holding space for example. Nice job, cheers !

Hey nice little game ! I think you did well at using the assets, the level design feels nice. I think the jump feels a bit weird because there is no inertia on his movement + the character jumps really far but not really high. Nice job, cheers

Hey ! I like the fact that you color coded the paths :D
I think you did a great job with the tutorial too

Hey, nice game, I really like the feeling of the delayed movement with the rudder ! It's a bit tricky to maneuver but it's a fun mecanic ! Cheers

Hey very fun idea to make that kind of puzzle game. I think the puzzles were fun !
On the third one I think there is a collision bug on the altar ! Good job, cheers

Hey nice idea overall, I like the ambiance and lights, but I think it lacks some simple sounds to "feel" the attacks. Also, I think the dungeons are a bit small for the theme "exploration".
Nice effort to make a simple comprehensive "story"/dialogue and skill system nonetheless. Cheers !

hey ! Thanks for playing, you need to bring back candies to the base ! Sorry it was written in the pirate speech but not in the rule so it was à bit unclear

Nice use of the assets, the concept seems great however I could not pick up any item for an unknown reason :(

Really cool concept and battle system !  The word/min counter is a nice addition :)I like the scrabble themed ground. The random level generation is a great addition to the game, however I encountered a generation where I could not finish the level ! Nice job, cheers.

The concept is really interesting but I think it lacks some stake. Maybe there could have been a time limit or a concurrent mapper or something like that ! Also, some ambiant sound or music could have made the exploration nicer ! Nice work overall :) Cheers

Very nice concept, the music is great. I think using 2D assets for the combat could have been better but I guess the 3D was easier to use to place units and make something a bit dynamic. Nice work overall !

Hey, original idea haha. It could be cool to have a bit of inertia on the ship ! 

I've never seen a ship with nitro before
Jokes aside, nice minimap. I think the movement could be a bit more dynamic, other than that its a nice concept. Cheers

Very well made ambiance, i mean it was very scawy for me :3
The voice over is a very nice touch, its pretty rare for a 48h made game :D

Fun idea, I think you could make funny interactions with the friend, like some messages or emotes when he is eatings to see what he likes the most.
I made like 4 or 5 plates and he liked them all, so I must be a 4 star chef, at least...

I like the look of the game, sounds and animations are great too !
The sword is a bit hard to use in my opinion but other than that that's a cool game ! Cheers

Yes it was planned to add some kind of arrow to return to base but we were short on time ! Thanks for playing :)

Hello everyone ! Thanks for playing our game :

This is our first gamejam (unrealvision and me) and we are very happy about the overall result. We will try to improvise the ship feeling, the tutorial and make it easier to know where the base is !

We are still new to gamedev and are willing to improve!

Have fun

Note :

You need to return to the base with collected candies to be refueled and upgraded ! Sorry, the written rules are a but unclear about this ^^'

hey! Thanks for playing. You need to return to the base with collected candies to be refueled and upgraded ! Sorry, the written rules are a but unclear about this ^^'

Thanks for playing the game, yes the tutorial text is a bit long. Ideally we would have introduce the commands and rules through gameplay but it's hard to do in this short time period and it was our first gamejam :)

Yes, we thought about adding an arrow to point to the main island but we ran out of time ! Maybe in another version of the game :D

A nice little game. Dialogues are very funny. The map generation system is really cool. Combats were a bit hard I think I lost to the first ennemy.

Very nice game feel, the levels are randomly generated based on the difficulty that we chose right ? That's a nice feature. Even the easy one was a bit too hard for my haha
Very nice job

Nice ambiance and very satisfying movement ! The parallax effect on the stars is very nice. Is this normal that I can't shoot spaceships around the planet ? Or at least this seems that they weren't taking any damage.

Excellent game, 5/5 ! A nice twist on the "exploration" theme :)