Hi, I just was wondering how do you plan when you have jams like these with little time. Do you already have a rougth idea what you like to do before the jam starts? Do you use some assets or do you got some kind of personal assets of your own in stock?
I would like to hear from others as well to learn from the experience. Many thanks in advance
Let's take the game I made for this jam for a example i thought of the idea first since I can make the player jump dash slow fall and stuff I thought maybe I should make it in a unique way . When someone touch fir they flinch or jump so fire = jump
I had to add other elements such as air and slow fall to give the game more play time
Since I only jam and never made a game outside a jam It didn't take long but it's nice when the code guy makes something on his own every now and then
Good luck everyone . Nothing is called talent it hard work so never give up
look its simple to stay small just act as if you know nothing complicated and try not to try to make it perfect by making a big good game make a very polished small one and tadaaaaaaa! its a jam game even and submitting should make you proud its the main point of the jam winning or losing is not that much important so try to relax and have fun
Me personally i always set up some things that you need universally no matter the game so that you can spend as much time on the idea and gameplay, for example i always build my entire UI before the jam and i also try to use as many resources or ideas from past games, I always have a 2nd godot window open to copy code from different scripts, i think its also pretty important to start from a simple idea thats easily manageable and then progressively add new things if u have the time and resources
Which stuff would you said are good to setup before? My idea is to build a small SDK atm I try to bundle sound, language/labels, maybe controlls and settings. So your personal library did grow over time might be the same case for me as well
Do you shrink down your concept first so you only have a small one or do you always just have a simple idea to start with
What I'm thinking is: start by brainstorming around the theme, deconstruct it into fundamental elements based on their properties, then put them back together in new ways. Then I pick the most interesting combinations and explore them further, and finally, from those, I choose the simplest and most intuitive mechanic to actually start building.
This is similar to the ancient Greek idea of reductionism—for example, fire is hot, fire emits light, and so on. I believe that any game, at its core, consists of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. In this first step, we extract the nouns, which correspond to the Mechanics in the MDA framework. The interactions between nouns then generate verbs, which correspond to the Dynamics in MDA. Finally, whether a game is interesting or not essentially comes down to the adjectives produced by these interactions—which correspond to the Aesthetics in MDA. Once you break a theme down into smaller elements, it becomes easier to see what reactions might occur between those elements, and it also becomes easier to generate ideas around each sub-theme. That鈥檚 how I understand it.Additionally, of course, other more important aspects of game design—such as feel/handling and difficulty curves—are not what this step takes into consideration
I feel like the core gameplay is like the main storyline of a novel — you start by focusing on a single point and then branch outward from there. A simple core mechanic reduces cognitive load, allowing players to instantly understand the game and enter a state of flow. After that, the extra side mechanics are like scenery along the roadside — they should only be added after the main corridor has been built. I feel like games like The Witness or Dark Souls were made with this kind of approach in mind. Of course, this is just my personal opinion.
