Post by StorytellerMeeka in Building a small team for Jam 5: AI welcome, ownership and polish matter

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Hi Small Loop Works,

Congrats on the wins with Plug & Prosper and White Approach. Your post is one of the clearer team pitches I've seen: small scope, real ownership, willingness to cut ideas. That's what caught my attention.

A bit about me: I'm Meeka, a storyteller and narrative designer. I've been building interactive fiction for about six months (Ink, Ren'Py, branching narrative, character-driven horror and dark romance). My work is at storytellermeeka.itch.io. Before that I spent years in IT consulting as a team lead and project manager, so I know how to work in a team, but I haven't done a game team yet.

To be upfront: I'm already preparing my own solo entry for this jam, "Goodbye Is Not an Option", and it's going well. So I'm not offering anything yet. I'd like to understand the project first and see whether it could work alongside that.

A few questions:

1. What direction are you leaning toward (genre, and how much story or dialogue the game would carry)? Is there a narrative role at all, or is this mostly systems and art?

2. What's the tech stack? I'm strong on the writing and structure side, less on JavaScript, so I'd want to know where a writer's work would plug in.

3. How much time per week do you expect from each person?

4. You mention releasing code under an open-source licence. Would that also cover writing and story content, or only code?

5. Does the jam allow someone to submit both a solo game and a team game, or would that be a problem?

No pressure to answer everything here, and happy to continue by email or DM. Thanks for putting this together.

Meeka

Small Loop Works27 days ago

Hi Meeka, thanks for the thoughtful questions!

Direction and narrative: Nothing is set in stone yet. The safest starting point is probably 2D, then exploring the theme when the jam begins, that’s how I approached the previous jams. I’m also exploring pipelines for an actual 3D game with an isometric-style camera. How much story or dialogue we include would depend on the concept we settle on. I’m open to it, but I wouldn’t want to promise a substantial narrative role before we know what the game needs.
Tools and workflow: Mainly Godot, various AI tools, and any purpose-built scripts or small test environments we need along the way. For writing, we’d work out how to structure and integrate the content once we know the game’s needs. Contributions would still be managed through GitHub, but we don’t have a specific narrative tool or integration pipeline decided yet.
Time commitment: I don’t have one fixed hours-per-week requirement for everyone. We’d agree on each person’s availability and responsibilities before starting. I do expect people to take what they commit to seriously: put real effort into it, communicate, and follow through. Ideally, that effort comes from their own interest in making something good and developing their skills. There’s room to explore ideas, but we’d agree on priorities before spending too much time polishing them, and everyone would need to be comfortable with work being revised or cut—including my own.
Open-source plans: Yes, that intention extends beyond code to writing, in-game text, story, tools, and other original work we create for the project and put in the repository. I’m leaning towards an AGPL-like licence for the code, with the creative content also openly licensed, although the exact licences still need to be agreed. It isn’t final, but everyone should join on the understanding that an openly licensed public release of their contributions is a likely outcome. Any third-party material or licensing restrictions would need to be flagged before adding it.
Solo and team entries: The current jam rules allow multiple entries as long as they’re significantly different, and welcome both solo developers and teams. That suggests a solo entry alongside a team entry should be fine, but they don’t explicitly address that combination, so I’d confirm with the organiser on Discord.