Me & my friend spent a full week developing a spin-to-win game but sadly we weren't able to submit it on time. For people who encountered the same issue as us, what issues did y'all find? I found A: the servers crashing and B: there were LOADS of game-breaking bugs we couldn't fix in 30 minutes. We're still finishing it because we're proud of the stuff we did, but can we have some advice for completing it on time? It's a little hard to find time after all with not all too much free time except on weekends and holidays... This is our first ever game jam so we're very new to this!!

First step with game jams that have the "24-hour" after deadline bug fix rule - submit early! Once you have a few game jam entries you learn to upload outside of expected busy times. I uploaded almost a day early and there was a lot of bugs and gameplay feel missing. (Just note that its an early build in the description)

For a 7 day game jam you have the time to spend the entire 1st day to plan, think about design and scope the project. Try to get to the core gameplay loop and cut what feels like "extra fluff". Think about games with 2-3 mechanics AT MOST and polish those well. Figure out the hard parts of the project and tackle those first as they will likely take the most time. 

My first day was thinking about design using Obsidian, getting references and doing some technical tests with HTML5. It turned out HTML5 wasn't going to work with multiplayer so I had to scrap that whole part of it. Good thing was I did that on day 1 and not day 5. So on Day 2 I was starting a fresh project with no real development done yet but a "relatively" good plan.

I've joined a few game jams before and I would say keeping the scope low and learning what tasks to pioritize are very importaint. Usally I like to think of game ideas that are simple but can be expanded upon if there is still time. Or if i come up with a bigger idea i need to try to figure out which parts are the most importaint and pioritize thoes. If you are a solo dev I would just focus on programing the core mechanics untill the game is playable then slowly polish the game by adding art and sound. I also like to give my self a fake deadline or milestone goals to see if im on track to finishing on time.

I've done about 20 game jams now of varying lengths, this is a list of things I try to keep in mind:

1. As others have mentioned, keep the scope manageable. What kind of game are you trying to make? Now, what's the simplest possible way to make that game? How much can you cut the scope before you even begin writing any code? With this in mind, try to come up with a plan and priority list that would leave you with a finished game about 70 to 80% of the way through the jam. That way when you over scope anyways you'll have a bit of extra time to finish everything.
2. Determine what your minimum viable product is, make it, then export and upload it immediately. Then you'll at least have something submitted and you won't be scrambling at the end of the jam to upload while dealing with server issues too. Plus, you'll have something for people to playtest and give feedback on well before voting starts, which should help you determine what to focus on with the remaining time.
3. Don't burn yourself out. It's very easy to spend 12+ hours a day, as many days as you can, working on your game (or even a single aspect of your game). Don't do this, take breaks, factor it into your scope and plan. And if you're really pressed for time, rotate between different aspects like code, design, art, sound, etc. so you don't exhaust yourself by staring at an IDE or art software for hours without a break. As an example, a couple days into this jam I realized I was spending way too much time on code and decided to switch to making some of the assets despite not having a fully playable prototype yet. In any other context this would be a poor use of time since assets aren't as important as functioning systems, but I was able to work faster overall as a result and probably wouldn't have finished had I not done that.