I participated in a game jam this weekend!

What is a game jam? A game jam is a small period of time (usually between 24 and 72 hours) where individuals and teams get together to make a game. At the start of the game jam, a theme is selected by the jam moderators, and everyone does their best to incorporate that theme into a functional game by the end of the jam. It's kind of like an iron chef for video games. Everyone jumps in, gets their secret ingredient, and tries their best to get it done. In this post I'm going to go in-depth on my creative process, the tools I used, and all the juicy good stuff. If you just want to see the demo (or play the game), just skip on to the end and there will be a youtube video and link to where you can download the game for free (windows only).

The Shenanijam

The Shenanijam is the first ever game jam hosted by Butterscotch Shenanigans, creators of the indie titles Crashlands, Flop Rocket, Quadrapus Rampage, and more as part of their celebration of 100 podcast episodes. Being a big fan of the BScotch team and their amazing podcast, I decided to partake in this event, stoke the creative fires, and try to come out the other end successful. It was rough but I made it, and produced a game just under 48 hours.

Ready, Set, JAM!

At 5pm CST on Friday, May 27 of 2017, I sat down and started mashing refresh on the launch page. A youtube link appeared, and the BScotch team gave an inspiring speech to all participants as they kicked off the jam. Themes could be chosen randomly via a roulette wheel that selected one of their hilarious podcast titles to use as your theme. Podcast titles and therefore themes varied from ideas such as omnidirectional rocket horse, beefy thumbs, melty caterpillar, hold the guac, fanta steak demon, and more.

My jam theme was relatively tame, but still open to interpretation. I rolled "Chasin' Cascades".

Pumped after the inspiring speech. I set off on a Journey to figure out....what the hell I was gonna create.

What to do what to do...

I had to keep a few things in mind. If I was going to complete the game, solo, I would have to do all of the art, and code, by myself. That means simple ideas, reuse as many art assets as possible, and when you think it's simple simplify it some more.

I popped open a red bull and paced around the house for a moment. There was no time to waste on developing a theme, so I tried to say "yes" to every first idea in my mind and build on it. The thought process went something like this:

Chasin' Cascades, so, chasing waterfalls...who chases water...Aquarius! Aquarius is chasing water to....restore precession to the equinoxes! YES! Because someone stole the water of time, yeah, who would do that though? Uhh.. (quick google later) Pisces! The last age bearer didn't want their age to end! BINGO!

I had a story, a main character, an antagonist, and a theme. All I needed now was the game genre. I'm not sure what sparked me, but "flappy bird" made sense as something that I should be able to code easily and get some tutorials on.

Toolbox Time!

Since I was already the tiniest bit familiar with Game Maker, there was no other choice for a game engine. Game Maker has powerful tools for creating 2D games with relative ease, and I could use a combination of code and drag-and-drop elements to get everything in place. A few minutes on youtube and I had a good selection of tutorials willing to show me how to make flappy bird in game maker. Cool. I watched them at 2x speed because there was no time to waste, and was able to establish that my idea was in fact viable, and a minimum product could be made with just a handful of lines of code, allowing me to focus on artwork and add more gameplay at the end if I had time.

Art for the Art God!!

Being no fool, I had already been using inkscape regularly for about a month before the jam. A sketch artist by nature, I knew that my own artistic style generally greatly lacks polish and can be really rough to get imported into damn near anything. I've recently been learning vector art to help offset this, and although the transition from a classic pad and pen to nodes and lines was difficult, I feel like I made enough progress to be manageable. I spent nearly the entirety of the first night on getting all of the art assets done, plus another three hours fighting with the exporter and Game Maker's settings to get the art assets in. However, once I figured out what checkbox needed to be selected for my assets to be imported without looking like junk, I was able to bring everything into the game and pass out for my first night. Sleep and proper eating are important when you're using your brain heavily.

A Few Lines of Code Later

I don't have a lot of "in-progress" shots, because I really didn't have time for that. I was focused on making a game, not a post after all! Saturday brought the bulk of my progress, fleshing out the entirety of the main game. You could fly, fall, collect water droplets, and most importantly, die. What's a game without a failure state eh? I also included a scaling difficulty system that would make obstacles move faster. At the end of the first full day, I was basically done. I still had art assets for a boss though, and I had nearly all of Sunday available to incorporate it. I took the rest of the night off, taking an hour or two to myself before bed to relax and breathe. I didn't want to face burnout by pushing myself too hard.

Boss Cooking and Rockin' Tunes

Although I consider it a "solo" jam, I was far from alone in making my game. @tltran kept a steady supply of water, snacks, complete meals, and caffeine at my fingertips, while being totally positive amidst my moments of snappy grumbles and growls of frustration when things weren't going right.

I also consider myself rather lucky in the audio department. There were only a few sound samples I needed, and I easily generated them using BFXR, an 8-bit mixing board. However the game just wouldn't have the right feel without some music, and that's where the lovely @jessamynorchard came to save the day. Offering the use of any of her songs, I rushed to grab her "Electronic Cassette" tracks and started plugging them in. They all worked perfectly to set the tone, and I whooped and hollered when "Morning Goddesses" matched not just the boss room, but also had a title that felt like too much of a synchronicity to pass up. With music and sound in, it was all down to a bit of polish before the big upload.

A Few Hours Left

With just a few hours left in the jam, I focused on "juicing" my game, a term used for all the flashy effects like screen shake and explosions that make a game appealing and exciting. I added some particle physics, a few extra animation frames, and got a title screen, some basic options, credits, tutorial elements, and a bit more of the story in. I went to record my demo, edited the video, and started the full upload process. I had completed my game, and although I stripped out some elements (like an entire timeslow powerup mechanic I spent a couple hours coding), I felt that the game was complete enough to be submitted. Sure, I could have spent days or weeks polishing and improving it, but that's not what a game jam is for. A game jam is there to make the most basic idea a reality. A reality that I was a part of.

In Conclusion

I had a blast. The BScotch team left a Discord channel open where everyone was sharing tips, tricks, progress, and helping troubleshoot the issues of others. I got to get feedback on my art as well as help those that were getting stuck exporting things the same way I was. I saved other people the hassle of hours of research and it felt amazing, meanwhile others helped save me hours by giving me code snippets that worked better than what I had in mind. Overall it was a wonderful event, with over 300 people from around the globe submitting over a hundred games. If you ever have a chance to be a part of a game jam, do it. There were tons of people with ZERO experience ever making a game that had completed projects at the end.

If you want to view all submissions, check them out HERE
If you want to play my game for free, it's HERE

Have you ever participated in a game jam? Did you play my game or any of the others? Let me know in the comments below, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

See ya next time,