This summer I joined my first game jam, the result was unexpectedly and reversedly the best. There are some things I did and did not If you follow this experience you may get similar or reverse results.
Let’s start with what is a game jam. Game jams are events that have a theme or some set of rules that requires participants to follow to develop and submit games in a limited time. Generally, participants are people who would like to develop games. The rolls may include, designer, programmer, artist, sound artist etc. As well as, participation can be done individually, teams also can be created. After the submission time, voting/evaluation starts and when this duration ends rankings are announced. The biggest aim is to achieve what is the aim of the participant, which can be improving in an area, having fun or meeting people as much as winning the jam. And the process brings a lot as an experience.
Now we know a bit about the game jams we can continue with LOWREZJAM. As the name suggests it is about low-resolution game development. The first example I could find is from 2014, with 32×32 resolution restriction, nowadays it is up to 64×64 with some permissions. As you may guess in this jam you are required to develop a game with resolution restriction only. Other than that you are free to choose your theme and development environment.
The blend of freedom and restriction may what made me have interest in LOWREZJAM. Of course, there is a bit more than that. Last year while I was doing my internship, I found out about the game jam first time and at that time I had finished developing a small fan-basketball game. Probably my second small personal project other than tutorials, with its euphoria and pride of accomplishment I may have felt like I could also conquer this challenge. What’s more, I really wanted to convert my basketball game to the required resolution an easy route. Me being me, somewhere there I forgot about the submission deadline and poof, no entries. I also want to add that I had no knowledge of pixel art at that time too, but probably it seemed like a good and fun challenge.
Let’s come back to the current year. Working in a 9 – 6 job, and freshly starting on full-time employment, my after work hours were full of consuming game development sources and sharing them through Twitter, of course with resting. As an excuse, when you work that long it is hard to create something afterward. Congrats to all the indies overcome this, you have my respect.
For the whole process, I believe I spent 8–10 hours working on the game. Two days after work times. I kind of designed the game between training sessions at work. I wanted it to include coffee because there was a coffee jam that I had heard two hours prior to it is ending and was sad that I could not join. Some simple game would be nice to implement. Even scene designs were ready.
I spent the first day trying to learn how to make pixel art, do the art and import it into Unity. That took some time, I just didn’t know, couldn’t upload the images correctly. If you try the game you could see how it is failed. My screenshots look okay but the game does not when you start it.
Other than the art I made the mistake of making the project 3D. Yep, that is something that sometimes I do to run from collider-trigger-rigidbody interactions in a 2D environment with sprites. I simply set the 3D object transparent and put the sprite at the front as a child object. But this time I used sprites as sprites with using 2D settings. Moreover, sometime around the start my camera setting was changed and made all the colliders seem off while they were okay which lead me to move colliders many times unnecessarily.
On the second day, I think I tried to touch up the codes and the looks overall. Around somewhere I needed to implement spawning for the coffee cup. Well, it took me some time as I couldn’t have the spawned objects align with spawner, at the end I let the spawners fall down when the spawner is clicked on. Also, there was the implementation of logic to determine possible coffee cup falling. A tutorial scene was added that something I never did but wanted to do for my projects. This is also what game jams are good for, they let you try new things. Lastly, I hunt for some sounds on freesound.org, My go-to sound space. In there I found nice cup sound but couldn’t find a nice background music then I went to my other go-to free asset space, Glitch The Game. Not to forget, I tackled into using fonts a lot. Tried to find bit based, low res fonts, tried to use them, couldn’t make them work, returned to old pal Arial.
After everything was done to the game now it was time to build it. Again with no experience with low-resolution games, I spent some time on building to correct resolution. It kinda did not work. I still am not sure and understand what a 64×64 resolution is. Like I am counting the square to up on good performed games but it does not seem to equal 64 or I do something wrong.
Uploading the game to itch.io follows building the game. Surprise surprise, this was also my first time uploading to itch.io. What an experience full of firsts! Spent some time uploading guides and decided on going with the document upload. I think there were more accepted and cool upload routes. the last part was adding details, which I left it with something like “LOWREZJAM entry detail WIP” for some time.
All this ended one day prior the submission ending. I could polish the game maybe learn correct resolution setting to build it but I left it at that and continued with my life. Did not do many actions about the jam afterward.
When the results came in my entry had only 2 votes and were literally the last one in the rankings, 170th out of 170 entries. In Turkish we call this “sondan birinci”, can be translated as first from the last a satirical approach to being last in a ranking looking for a good outcome. So I had my share of fun on me being the last from all entries. That felt a bit better than other possible low rankings. I knew my entry was not successful, it kind of was abandoned so the result did not surprise that much. Also, I am happy that my audio category did best with 137th among my others. To sum up the whole journey, I am happy that I joined the jam and be the last in rankings. Not to brag but It is a very easy to find my entry among some others.
Since my game jam story finished we can move to what I would suggest from my experience to you to avoid being last in rankings and get the most from your game jam experience.
Tips for Improving Game Jam Experience
Know your game development environment
So I chose to use Unity3D as my game engine for this game jam. The main reason is, of course, I have game development experience in only Unity3D and like to use it for my projects. Again, I had no experience in low-res game development and the settings it may require on the process. For example, while trying to import my sprite, I should have chosen a setting that maps the image to pixels in 1:1. Finding out of that took me some time.
On the export step, I had made a lot of builds to match the quality to editor quality. Sadly, I was not successful in my endeavor and the qualities do not match which left me with some time loss.
Choosing your development environment is also an important decision. If I were to have experience in Godot Engine I may choose to use it. The reason is I saw people’s post about Godot being their choice for this jam and it is reasonable for me from my limited exposure to the usage of Godot. The low-res development definitely can be done most of the game engines but some of them may provide simpler tools for beginners.
It is important to choose an appropriate environment for development according to what functionality it provides and your skills on that. Moreover, doing research on tips and tricks for your development approach bring more than what it takes.
Find nice and relevant game assets
As much as how your game is played important, how it looks important as well. Visuals are what player immerses with the gameplay. I am thinking all the possible improvements to look of my game. Adding details to the coffee cup wouldn’t be bad, even the backgrounds could use some action. Well, I wanted to do my art assets as I adore pixel art from where I stand. It was fun to use Piskel.
If you are not determined to use your art, then with the permissions of the game jam you can use the ones that the creator allows you to. This may fasten the development and bring some art that you are not capable of making just yet.
Another important asset for game development is sound. I use a very nice online library freesound. If I cannot find what I am looking for I use my go-to sounds from Glitch The Game assets. I kind of like to add nice immersive sounds to my projects. Also, adding sounds to UI elements is my other sin. In this project, I could find a nice cup popping sound. But for the background, I could not find what I looked for, some relaxing but fun and cute beat. I used the assets of Glitch The Game. If I were to spend more time on development, I would search harder for the sound I just described.
The sound you play on your game should be relevant to your game’s story and let the players feel the environment. With a powerful sound, you may contemplate another weak point in your game.
Polish your game
When I submitted my game, there were a lot of areas for improvement. I could create new sprites, optimize winning and losing logic, find more relevant sounds. I had one extra day, but my only aim was to join the jam with a somewhat done game.
If you are serious about the countable success of the game jam, polishing your game is highly recommended. It will improve your game from the state you want to submit to something better, increasing the chance to get higher rankings.
Clear the bugs
Even though you can not polish your game it is important to present your players a bug-free experience. That way you will have a smoothly playable game that provides a unique game experience to players even though it may not be the best possible iteration.
Follow the jam’s rules
In my only comment, the commenter says that my font’s resolution is not suitable for the jam’s restriction. I can easily believe them because while adding text I did some resolution improvement actions like increasing the font size but decreasing the text size through size scaling. That may have caused some violations.
It is a good practice to double check your implementation for its suitability for the game jam’s rules. Even though you believe you did your best to follow them, there may be some slips.
Spend effort to page of the entry
So as I mentioned earlier I made little to no effort for my entry at the start, leaving the game detail like “detail WIP”. If it were more catchy or informative I believe more people would try the game.
Telling people about the game, the story, how you made it on its entry page would show attentiveness and pick people’s interest to try it out.
My way of upload was also not aesthetic for what itch.io provides. While uploading the web build, uploading it somewhere and sharing the link would ease the process to play the game. Also, I assume you can in someway upload your game playable on itch.io that provides another easiness to try it.
Engage with other participants
A game jam composes a community around its participants. As much as you interact with them, you gain lots of value. For example, I only had one person comment on my game and highly appreciate it and grateful to the commenter. Let’s say I went on to play their game or other games and left a comment, in there maybe another jammer would saw my profile, try out my game and leave another great comment.
Another way of engagement would be using social media. I saw people posting about their entry in some amounts on Twitter, imagine leaving a comment to that post or retweeting, even direct messaging with improvement suggestions. I believe sharing can be done on Facebook as well, there are a lot of game developer friendly groups. They do #ScreenShotSaturdays and feedback posts.
After all these, there is a big possibility that you acquire helpful comments on your game and meet new people.
Self-promote
Letting people know what you work on is never harmful. That way you can interact with more people by letting the world know you are taking an action and joining a game jam as an extra contribution to game development. This can be done by sharing your process and feeling through your social media accounts and blog. This is like engaging with the other participants but with the increased count of people involved.
Key Points
- Chose your development environment suitable for your skills and the requirements of the game jam.
- Make a small research on tips and tricks about the development requirements of your game for your chosen game development environment.
- Try to find relevant game assets through online and legal resources.
- Polish your game before submitting.
- Eliminate as many bugs as you can.
- Pay attention to jam’s rules and follow them.
- Fill up the details of your entry.
- Upload quality builds as your entries.
- Use the jam platform to its fullest.
- Engage with other participants, try out their games, leave comments, answer their comments.
- Let the world know you joined a game jam and share about it through social media.
- Gain experience on what you want to do.
- Try new things.
- Have fun.
Last Words
Joining a jam, trying to follow the rules, develop a game and feel the accomplishment, such a nice journey. I always have fun and am happy when I develope games, what a good thing to add challenges to this by participating in a jam.
LOWREZJAM2018 is the first game jam that I wanted to join, could join and want to join again. I had so much fun trying to develop new things, do pixel art for the first time, looking through other entries, checking my ranking on the list of games with least times voted and being the last from all the participants. Next year I am planning to climb the latter a bit higher than this year which I believe I can manage.
Thank you for reading my small journey on joining a game jam for the first time. I tried to tell my mistakes that let me the first starting from the last so that your chances to be my reverse order will be higher. Keep well, have fun and develop games.
Devsplorer 