I won a game jam and told nobody about it.
A couple years ago, I started fiddling again with a game engine, out of boredom (or was it confinement?). Just like old William Munny shooting empty bottles, I slowly regained my footing and pretty soon, I had created a decent number of projects, all named “Demo” or “Test”, sometimes followed by a two digits number.
Still, I was yet to make a finished game.
Following the advice of virtually every indie game dev online to anyone willing to get (back, in my case) into it, I decided to join what the cool kids call these days a game jam.
Finding a game jam
It’s not straightforward: a quick glance at itch.io shows dozens of options to chose from, each one a community of its own, with various constraints and objectives, and very different levels of experience from participants. Some are featured events everyone wishes they’d win, others are trying their best to become one of those.
Seriously, if you’re looking for, say a month long metroidvania 1-bit solo challenge, or writing a virtual novel with twelve strangers over a week-end, chances are it’s there somewhere waiting for you to join.
I just wanted to make a complete game that people would play and enjoy. I chose one with few participants and a solid Discord etiquette, a so-called Asset Jam, where all participants are given the same visuals to make a game with. The results are always surprising and it sounded like fun. After registering and introducing myself to the team other attendees, we all started to wait patiently for the assets to be revealed.
First, I wanted to do it all by myself: writing, coding, music, everything.
In the meantime, I had started chatting with an aspiring game developer (I’ll call him Stefàn), very creative and visibly unafraid to take on a new challenge. The suggested theme was Afterlife and he was all about post-apo, the game genre where you play Will Smith and his dog.
"Anyway, we started jamming."
As a team, we brainstormed for some time, talked a lot about games, even more about books and films. Pretty soon, the wait was over, and the competition sprite-sheet was submitted to us all. This is half of them:
My first reaction was to quickly remove the cover of the big red button sitting on my desk that says “Quit”. You see, most asset jams are usually based off luxurious sheets with numerous sprites and animations, identifiable characters and setup elements, much like this:
But not this one, though. Did I mention it was the organizers’ first time at hosting a game jam? Some would have been discouraged, started over with a better rounded, more established event, leaving forever behind the unresolved potential of amazing games never to be made.
Not us. We stuck to the plan.
We were doing it, no matter what. Stefàn and I crafted the story of Bob, a “prepper” guy who went into the wild before the world comes to an end, and won’t be bothered by anyone (or anything) when it finally does. He shops online for guns and shoots zombies.
Oh, and he lost his dog, it’s important somehow.
Making a game in one week
It’s tough. Like, physically. This won’t be the week you start exercising again, Bill.
But I definitely was going to do this, and Stefàn was eager to help. We decided he’d write dialogs that I would hook into the game later, while I would start to work on what makes zombies tick.
Preparation being key, in addition to Godot, my favorite game engine, I had gathered many tools to quickly draw, animate, make music (that’s a whole story for another day…), some I knew already well, others I wanted to try for the occasion.
Polish
To make people want to play your game, it needs to feel like the other games. Some features are expected:
It should run
“Thank you, Captain Hindsight” you could rightfully object. I had the web page hosting the game set to “private” during the whole of the event. What do you think happened? Fortunately, they let me know rapidly my game was not public and I was able to qualify. You worked hard on everything else, don’t screw up on technicalities. Check. Double, triple check, and test on different hardware than your own.
Have good sound
No need to be a pro at FLStudio to make a good tune for your game in a few hours or less. And no need for endless banks of over-used samples either: just make your own with these freebies:
Snip/Snap : Audacity, reliable open source sound editor.
Bleep/Bloop : jsfxr is a JavaScript port of sfxr, originally created by Tomas Pettersson, online tool to create 8-bit sounds, from drops to explosions.
Boots/Cats : BeebBox (and all of its clones, I personally prefer JummBox) is an 8-bit ready online music tracker.
Make nice screens
A game over screen is quick to make and add value to your game. Same can be said for home screen and settings. And last but not least,
Make that screen s҉h҉a҉a҉a҉a҉a҉k҉e҉
I firmly stand behind the following statement: screen-shake brings the most value for the least expense. If your game has no screen-shake, it’s not finished.
Final thought
The game came out first! Out of two submissions only, but still.
Unfortunately, my team mate Stefàn didn’t make it, and remains missing to this day. I mean, at some point he just stopped loging in, don’t call the cops. I’m not even sure he’s aware we won.
If you’re not sure what kind of game to make when you have to, make one where you shoot zombies. People love them. It’s really not that complicated.
And make sure there’s a dog. That should do it.
Post Scriptum
You can play The Meaning of Afterlife right now on itch.io.
I wish to adress a warm shoutout to CubeCry who handles the MysterySeekers discord server. Two more jams have been held since successfully, and without their good will and efforts, we’d never be able to see gems like this.