GBJAM11 - Hopscape

Hello! Welcome to the behind the scenes on how my first ever GameJam went, and, spoiler alert, it was amazing! The jam lasted 10 days so I'll go over how each day went:

Day 0

I had been looking around the internet to look for places to start my first game jam and I happened upon GBJAM11, which is a GameJam event that focuses on making games that are meant to be played on the GameBoy. This means limiting our aspect ratio, resolution, color palette and available inputs. These were all problems that we'd have to solve later.

I saw that this jam was going to start in just a few days and whether or not I thought I was ready for it, I knew that this was a perfect opportunity for me to try something new so I joined the GBJAM11 discord and looked for some team members.

I was pleasantly surprised at how fast and easy it was to find some members for my team, within the day I had already recruited a Game Designer, an Artist, and a Composer! I convinced a fellow developer friend to join me so that made us a team of 5 working on this game.

Day 1 - 3

These days were mostly filled with discussion about how the game should be played, which direction the art should be, agreeing to disagree and making compromises. We never designated a leader, but since I was the one who got the group together I thought it'd be best if I stepped up to fulfill that role. My friend Robby let me know ahead of the GameJam that he wouldn't be able to contribute as much as he'd like so he also promoted me to Lead Developer on the project. These first few days were super chaotic and a little stressful trying to get everyone on the same page. I learned that communication is beyond crucial in Game Development, especially when you're on such a short time frame like a GameJam.

Since a few members of our team were on completely different time zones, discussions would take part at 2 times during the day and it was my job to make sure that everyone was on the same page and understanding what we were doing for the project.

I also learned that you almost never make what you had originally planned. Our designer came up with some really cool ideas, but I wasn't comfortable coding the features needed for that specific design in 10 days so we had to compromise on a few things and meet where things were more manageable for me.

Day 4 - 10

Things really start to churn for the team and I. Music is jamming out, art is getting drawn, and I and Robby are programming and merging our pull requests left and right. I really felt like we were getting into a rythmn and I really enjoyed the feeling of working on a project with the team and with THIS team. Everyone was open to feedback, one person would post something in discord and others would comment on it, maybe suggesting a tiny tweak, but most of the time, really excited about the progress everyone was making and continuing to work towards the final product.

Though I was in a groove, that doesn't mean I wasn't stressed out to the max during this stage.

I was coming home from work, where I was already constantly in communication with the team, working on homework where I could, to work on the project until I was too tired to work on it anymore and I could feel it affecting my code. I felt like I had to put the amount of hours I did in it because I wanted to make sure that we put our best foot forward, and that meant working on it as much as I could.

We all did an amazing job and I wish I had written how each day went as they happened so I had more to say, but I was just so caught up in the jam that I didn't have enough time to do so. I will try do to so for my next jam I enter.

I am actually very proud of what my team and I have put forward today, it's the first time I've worked with others, and the first Game Jam I've ever been a part of. If you are wondering if you should do a GameJam for the first time, don't question it, JUST DO IT!! It was such an amazing experience and I will 100% be doing another one in the future.

For those interested in the more technical aspects of the project, I'll go over my code and the problems I faced in another blog post soon.

Thanks for reading and I encourage everyone to try our game out, it is a little on the easy side, and it'll only take you maybe 10 min to beat the game.