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About the website (my own personal meta-jam)

A topic by SDGGames created Aug 12, 2025 Views: 277 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Jam Host(+3)

Hello everyone! I'm Matthew, the guy behind the 20GC website. I've been promising the community an update for a couple of years now (yikes), but now is the time to do it. I wanted to start a thread for conversations around the overarching 20 Games Challenge.

A couple of things to note up-front:

  1. I will be adding games to the challenge and tweaking the order. There is still a pretty daunting jump from remake to commercial-scale release (yes, even a commercial indie game is much bigger than one of these games). I want to help set up community members for success, and am trying to prevent this from just becoming another LeetCode style activity that has little practical benefit
  2. You don't have to worry about the order changing. The existing challenge will remain as "classic mode." I'm also not planning on modifying the first few games, so you should be able to jump over to the newer game list without any issues.
  3. I'm looking for feedback! I'll post the new URL soon (yes, we're getting a real domain), and I'll be asking for input as we go.

I realize that it is a bit silly modifying the challenge *during* the jam, but I just didn't have the bandwidth to get it done earlier. We hope to make this jam a recurring one, so the updates will definitely benefit everyone going forward.

HostSubmitted

This is perfect though - makes this jam the last hurrah of the classic challenge list!

So, I’m new to the community (stumbled across it shortly before the jam). I wouldn’t consider myself a complete beginner, but I’m here for simply because finishing has always, at all stages, been my struggle. I think the challenge addresses this particularly by putting greater emphasis on finishing and moving on than on coming up with a marketable product.

I think the value I see in the challenge is more on the discipline required to keep making something, to keep learning and bettering yourself, to take pride enough in the process that I’m willing to put a bow on it and post it to my page. And I think that’s a very valuable mindset for new (and not so new) devs. A list easing new beginners into dev is probably useful, and it could really shine with a sort of progress tracking system and badges similar to Microsoft’s online training platform.

But I think the list is a little less important than the philosophy behind the thing. I might not be your target audience and I’m not sure if this feedback is useful, but I wanted to let you know why I’m here!

Jam Host(+1)

Absolutely! I have benefitted a ton from finishing projects. However, out of the 30 games I started making, I have finished the majority of the "short" ones and have failed to finish all but 2 of the "commercial" ones. 

A few skills I want to capture (in the order that they are needed)

  • Finishing (and shipping) any game
  • Finishing a project that takes more than a weekend. Perseverance when it is no longer fun.
  • Managing scope in a project. Hitting a pre-defined time window for a small(ish) game.

I'll keep that in mind, though. I want to have a "I just want to finish something" track for people who don't have a specific goal. But if your dream game is an RTS,  or a Boomer Shooter, then I want to provide a bit of a path leading in the right direction.