Thank you! And yeah, I think scope is probably one of the most important — and dangerous — parts of a game jam.
You have to plan your steps somehow. You need time to think, implement, and especially test a lot. The more freedom and flexibility you give your systems, the more opportunities you give the player to break them haha. So for a jam, I try to keep things tight.
Something I usually do is make sure that by the end of the first day, I already have the core loop working, including the beginning and the win condition. I never want to leave the ending for the final days. From that point on, I can expand, polish, and add content, knowing that technically I could build and submit the game at any moment. In a jam you're always going to run out of time — sometimes at the beginning, sometimes at the end, but you're going to run haha.
For me, a game should be fun, but I also want it to be meaningful. Sometimes I achieve that, sometimes I don't. I usually have a little mental checklist:
- It has to be beautiful.
- It has to be meaningful.
- It should be about a journey, whatever kind of journey that may be.
- It has to tell you something.
That's how I try to make people feel something. I think we all have something we want to share, and games are an amazing way to do that.
As for a commercial release... I don't know yet. I work at a game studio, and I know firsthand that making a commercial game is hard, long, and expensive. I definitely want to make my own commercial game eventually, but right now jams are training for me, and the feedback I get from them is probably the most valuable part.
You can learn these lessons here, or you can take your chances somewhere else where the stakes are much higher. The sad truth is that outside of a jam, you can make a game and almost nobody may play it, even if it's free. Players are incredibly demanding customers. You might buy something you see on the street just because it catches your attention, but with a game, people will read reviews, watch trailers, streams, and gameplay before deciding whether it's worth their time and money.
So the short answer is: not right now, but eventually, yes. And hearing that you would wishlist this one on Steam definitely means a lot to us!