Lessons from My First Game Jam

One month ago today, I made I Will Set for my first ever game jam.

I liked it. So I did more .

One whirlwind month later, I’ve published 7 games here on itch, and I’m ready to slow down and think about what I’ve learned from each of these games, what their futures are, and what I want in my own future as a… can I call myself a game dev, now?

This is the first of a series of devlogs revisiting those games. For “I Will Set,” it is also a postmortem.

Now let us travel back to one month ago…

Earlier that week I had woken up one morning, was drinking tea by my window, and suddenly had the thought out of the blue: 

I think I want to make a game.

I didn’t have a specific game, or even a kind of game, in mind. I just felt like I wanted to do it and it was time.

Where did this thought come from? Why now?

I play a lot of games. I know people who make games. I’ve been to a GDC or two, over a decade ago. But whenever I’ve thought about it in the past, being a game developer just kind of seemed like a lot of work, most of it unpleasant. I never considered it seriously. I've worked on game-like projects, but actually being a game dev?

I know myself. I want things to be exactly a certain way, and I can get ambitious and have Ideas. If I were going to make a game, I’d probably need to start a proper game studio, hire a bunch of people, spend all my time managing employees and business stuff and promoting and writing endless emails back and forth with publishers and platforms and funders and the localization team and the QA team and etc etc etc…

But I do like games.

I guess now I’m at a point in my life where I don’t miss my tech industry “work hard play hard” days. I don’t feel like everything I do needs to be the most giant epic project ever. I don’t need everything I do to be “productive” or “worthwhile.” Maybe I could just make a game quickly, for fun, and not spend years burning myself out on business stuff I don’t value while chasing something intangible that I also don’t value.

So I looked to see what game jams might force me to do something quick and simple just to get my feet wet, and found Trijam, where the goal is to make a game in 3 hours, but you’re allowed to take as long as you need within a weekend.

Perfect!

I’d never used a game engine, but I’ve got plenty of relevant experience. So I had reason to be optimistic about what I could achieve in one day by myself.

So I did some research on what the cool engines are these days, and decided to give Godot a try. Armed with this tutorial by Brackeys, I knew I could make something.

Choosing an engine always seemed intimidating before, because I thought putting effort into learning the wrong one would lock me in mentally. I am very slow at learning interfaces, and object-oriented programming doesn’t come naturally to me. I knew I would have to spend weeks of dedicated learning, just to be able to know how to approach any real project of substance. Because it wouldn’t be like me to make just a regular platformer or have straightforward mechanics, right?

But the small commitment of making a game—any game—in just one day, using the barest functionality of an engine, helped along by a tutorial that shows exactly where all the needed UI elements appear on the exact same version of the game engine as I was using, made it feel like I could try the engine instead of commit my entire brain and future to it. I was prepared to be happy making literally anything that would load and run and let a player move around.

What’s wrong with regular platforming? I like regular platforming. I play regular platformers all the time. I figured that with a little bit of custom art and music, it could still be a vibe no matter how simple. 

I realized that these days, I value the intangible vibes of a game much more than I value the technical. I’m jaded and over it. I still love and appreciate a mechanical gameplay twist, and level design that digs deep into every possibility, but that won’t be what catches my interest anymore. When the music and art and movement and story all come together into a feel, that is what I like, and that aspect is more reasonable to do by myself as a solo developer with my particular skill set.

So before I started ideating on game ideas for Trijam 279’s “Sunset” theme, I decided on a game design guiding star: vibes-first. Cut away all the normal game design fluff and gimmicks, and double-down on atmosphere. Don’t throw my life away adding levels and things to do and neat ideas and hours of gameplay, just capture that one moment with that one vibe.

Other developers can make games I like to play, that have neat ideas and hours of gameplay. I'm very glad that they do. I will buy their games, and keep buying their games. But I don’t need to make those games myself. I can make games that capture something only I can express, because they are my vibes that only I can vibe in the exact way I vibe them.

Is all of this overthinking it, and overly dramatic, for a postmortem on a short, simple, not-at-all-mindblowing game made in one day?

Nope! My whole goal was to learn that I can have big over-thought art pretentions and yet still sit down and make something simple rather than nothing at all.

And I did!

And I had fun doing it. It took me 8 hours instead of 3, but I managed to get in a bunch of the little things I cared about to hopefully make that one special moment for someone. 

Did I need to spend an hour to give particle effects and dynamic sfx to the landings? Probably yes, because those add to the falling-is-the-point vibes. Do I need multiple areas to find and set in? Yes, we want to vibe in a big wondrous world that encourages us to pay attention to what’s around us. Do I need perfect metroidvania platforming level design and additional platforming elements? No, that adds to the gameplay but not the game. More time spent platforming is less time spent sunsetting.

It took all day, what with taking breaks for snacks and to look up tutorials. But I did manage to create it in one day, and submit to the jam! Mission accomplished!

I hadn’t really thought past submission. I didn’t care about how well I placed or whether my game was popular. I wanted to make a game and learn from it, and was fully prepared to throw it into the void and move on. Being new to itch and new to jamming, I didn’t have any expectations.

But the voting period was a highlight for me! Everyone was so nice, and made such interesting games, and the jam ended up doing much more for me beyond providing an excuse to make a game.

I played every single other game in the jam. I felt justified in lying around all day playing games on my laptop because it was my moral duty to rate and comment. I was inspired by what other people had done within the same constraints, and I had a good time commenting back and forth with people. 

I hadn’t been thinking about the community aspect when I joined, and I learned that I like it! If I could spend every weekend making a little game to share with people just for fun, and never have anyone play it again after that, that suddenly seemed like a fun way to spend life!

Maybe making games isn’t just about creating a perfect ambitious giant work of art of lonely creative genius, that takes years and giant teams, and that must be successful to justify its existence, and that will then exist separate from the author, for random people to consume as an independent object that lives its own life. Maybe making games can be a fun thing that people do to express themselves and share with their friends, family, and community, and if that game then fades away into the sunset never to be seen again, that’s okay because it lived its purpose well, not as an objective object but as a vibe of the moment.

And I knew that stuff in theory. It’s just that I’m special and different and if I were to make a game it would be better than other games, so I didn’t really know it in my heart. But at this point I believe it, in my heart and in my actions.

One month later, I still like my little sunset game. I have no regrets. 

I worried going back to fix or add more stuff would feel like a chore, but everything is so much easier after a little more experience, and there wasn't much I wanted to add. Today I’ve uploaded the last of a few post-jam quality of life improvements: controller support, pause menu, and sound settings. Then a chrome update broke shaders for macOS users, so I went back and removed the pause menu shader I had added. 

If any other tech issues pop up, I’ll try to fix them, but I’ve decided to call the game done forever and let it exist as a monument. It’s easy for me to see how more could be added, and how it could be expanded into a “full” game, but I can’t see how doing that would make it any more itself than it already is.

My next game, however, is another story. That’ll be a tale for next time…

Thanks for reading :)

i_like_snacks

P. S. You can play it here: https://i-like-snacks.itch.io/i-will-set