I decided to make a game jam game!

Disclaimer: I lost my entire completed devlog because I forgot to save a draft, and when I went to finally save, my browser window was suddenly no longer there.  The original was better, and I am sad.  T_T  It might get edited if I remember how I said some of it later.

In the past, I'd considered participating in GMTK game jams, but all I'd contributed so far was a 20-or-fewer-second musical theme to my husband's game a couple of years ago.  Last year's theme, "Out Of Control", gave me a number of not-great ideas that sort of just tore themselves apart as I tried to solidify them, so I just did various tutorials on arbitrary topics instead of the jam, and participated in a very minor amount of playing/rating peoples' jam games.

This year, I actually managed to participate in GMTK jam for real - I made a game all the way to playable and submitted it!

How It Started

This year's theme, "Joined Together", was announced.  I started thinking about what that meant to me and how I could manifest it.  One of the things that first came to mind was the thought of how people join together.  Through communication, of course - but not necessarily just through what we'd view as the tools or channels of "communication".  Every day, it is very easy to misunderstand, and to be misunderstood.  How is it that people "join together" to get "on the same page"?  How do we manage to navigate past the assumptions and categorizations we layer over one another without even seeming to consciously think about it?  For that matter, a misunderstanding isn't always between people, but sometimes within our very selves.  Can we even tell when we're "othering" our own thoughts?

I started trying to think of mechanics that could explore this.  However, since I was dealing with thoughts themselves, and I felt I had to start working towards something, I settled on starting up a project in visual novel format, using Ren'Py - partly because it has a number of out-of-the-box features that would be helpful to completing the jam, if I didn't manage to think of an alternative way to manifest the idea in time.  The initial idea was to present assumptions that assert that certain things are separate or unrelated, and then challenge them with branching approaches that players would be invited to explore, about how those things are actually joined together.  Choices would let players either build on, accept or reject engaging with these.  Given the way it was shaping itself up, this would occur mostly via dialogue.  At least one full path of dialogue would need to be completely finished for the jam game.  It would need art for the representing character to show several expressions.  It would need several "places" to go, tied to the concepts themselves.  It should have supporting music as well, and the interface should be customized to go well with it all.

What Went Right

I was able to keep the jam constraints in mind and revisit my scope on a recurring basis.  When I was working on the writing, I could sort out what I needed from the art.  When I was working on the art, I was able to distinguish the essential art from the would-be-nice-to-have-art-for-this... art, and to say "This art is necessary for the game to work, it has to go in as-is, right now."  From start to finish, I could constantly re-adjust to the remaining timeline, and re-prioritize the list of things to work on - and while this resulted in music moving "under the cutoff line" when I finished the art that would actually end up in the game and realized that the way it had shaped up, the writing was THE most important thing and MUST be finished - that enabled me to finish the writing with a sort of intense motivation.  Finishing out the coding that was still needed came after that, but before music, interface customization, or any more art polish.

I was able to remain relatively... serene through most of the jam.  I could manage my expectations about what I was truly okay with sharing - if anything about the game wasn't done to my (game-jam-adjusted) satisfaction, I was in complete control of whether I would actually submit it or just... not.  I could stop at any time if I didn't have something I could feel happy about putting out there, and that would be okay.  I also made sure that I set my own personal deadline for working on anything about the game at one hour before the jam deadline, so that I would have a little time to troubleshoot exports or uploads or whatnot.  And when that time came, I had something that was by no means perfect, and not at all what I thought it would be at the start of the jam, but it was something I was proud enough of to go ahead with.

What Went Wrong

Going into this game jam, I had previously done some tutorials in various programs, including Ren'Py, and I had watched many videos about character art principles, tips and tricks, and using transparency and layering in art software.  What I had not done: Actually used/practiced all these things.  While it was a game jam, which is a great learning opportunity at the best of times, things could have gone a lot more smoothly had I ever actually made a test Ren'Py project start to finish, or made other character art with transparent background and color layers, etc. at some point before the jam itself.

I mentioned among things that went right that I had set my "code freeze" to one hour before the submission deadline.  That was a good thing.  However: I had never created a project page on itch.io before.  I had never uploaded anything to itch.io before.  I had never packaged the executables for a Ren'Py project before.  It did work out in the end thanks in large part to the user-friendly nature of both Ren'Py and itch.io, but it would have been far less nerve-wracking if I'd tried it out at some earlier point before the jam.  As it was, I made it to "runs in browser" status only about 10-15 minutes before the tidal wave of GMTK submissions hit itch.io.

What Went Otherwise

I made a visual-novel format game for a (generally) mechanics-oriented game jam.  I do not regret doing so; it was the way I could express my take on the theme within the 48-hour deadline.  Since the jam ended, I've thought of other game ideas that follow this theme - none of them are visual novels, but none of them have this same take.  (And I do not think that I am currently capable of creating any one of them to the same level of satisfaction in expressing their takes within 48 hours.)  But I did set my expectations that people would be less likely to play this than if it had been a mechanical expression of the theme.

I made my first game, for my first game jam!  People experienced it!  They commented, they complimented, they complained provided their valuable insights (sorry, I really wanted that alliteration)!  I got to hear about some of the perspectives they brought to it, and some of the observations they took with them from it.  This was wonderful.  I got to play their games, and many others.  All of it was an amazing experience, and I'm so happy.