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Hello everyone,

My son wants to be a game developer and has essentially mastered Scratch already. We joined GameDev.tv about 10 days before the Game Jam began. I'm completing every lesson on my own first, then we watch the same lesson together afterwards so I can help answer his questions. 

We haven't even completed the Beginner 2D lesson for Unity but game jam came and we decided to give it a try! Because Halloween isn't celebrated in our country, we had no idea that we should make it a scary themed game and went for a happier theme: a monkey is looking for friends but continues to be "uninvited" by each animal until finding some other monkeys to play with at the end. 

My son did 100% of level design with ChatGPT creating the sprites and he did most of the programming working many hours every day after school. I acted more as producer: fixing bugs, helping direct him in the next task to work on, play testing, creating the comics and transitions, and making sure the giraffe's head stays connected to the neck at all times! 

If you'd like to check out our platformer and give us some feedback, my son would be thrilled! Gameplay inspired by Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure (1992) and story inspired by the children's book "One Cheeky Monkey" by Aimee Said & Lisa Kerr.

My son has played through and given his rating on almost every game already.

Thanks!

 /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

I'll give yours a rating! Here is my son's (age 11) game: /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

I'll give yours a rating! Here is my son's (age 11) game: /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

I'll give yours a rating! Here is my son's (age 11) game: /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

I'll give yours a rating! Here is my son's (age 11) game: /jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

My son (age 11) would love to have more ratings on his first ever game!

/jam/gamedevtv-halloween-jam-2026/rate/5145863

It worked out okay. The sizing of the sprites wasn't a huge deal as we could use Unity's scaling to grow or shrink them. We did have a resize a few items such as the monkey hand custom mouse cursor. Once we got the comic size we wanted, I would share it and ask ChatGPT to make one the same size for the next panel. I find working with ChatGPT to be very managable, especially if you share a lot of details. My son, 11 years old, would write 1 sentence requests and have trouble getting things to look right. But I write whole paragraphs with many details about what exactly I'm looking for and it produces very good results. Of course, it still isn't perfect every time, so sometimes I have to say, "no, not like that. Instead, do this..." But for creating sprites, comics, and background images, chatGPT did well for us. 

Thank you! Actually, the game we first used for inspiration was the old Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure game from the 90's. 

Thank you! We had considered a farm game for the "uninvited" theme similar to yours but opted for a monkey trying to find friends instead. 

Thank you! It a fun and educational to make this.

Thank you! We learned a lot and had fun as our first ever game to attempt. A platformer seemed the easiest style for our first game. 

Thank you for the suggestion. The graphics were made by ChatGPT. 

Thank you for your feedback. A sound/music setting option was on our to-do list but we ran out of time! 

Honestly it never crossed out mind to make it Halloween themed. We assumed October was just a coincidence as we don't live in a place that celebrates Halloween. So we focused on the idea of being unvited and settled on a monkey being misunderstood and rejected by animals until he finds his place with his friends.

Nice Game. My High Score is 6.29 sec

Nice Game. I Beat the whole thing and it was realy fun

My son and I are building this together, but I wasn't sure if we both needed to register for the game jam. Do we need 2 separate accounts? Do we get 2 votes or are we as a team counted a 1 unit?