My Global Game Jam Experience
It was due to an invitation that I attended Global Game Jam this year. Since I lacked confidence in my programming abilities, I listed my skills as Writer and QA....Before GGJ started I went online and I realized that all the questions I had as a first timer there were not many articles to read online. So let me break this down in a way that I wanted it to be explained to me. This experience might be different for everyone because each site handles the jam differently.
On Friday, we sat down to hear an introduction about the schedule and finally the big reveal about the theme. Then they had an icebreaker, which was nice because if you hadn't had a group formed before the theme was announced here was a second chance. Afterwards, we split up into our group to scout out a room to compile our thoughts.
1.) I read online that you should come to a game jam with goals in mind (ex. We decided that we had to meet new people)
2.) A tip that I picked up online and implemented was: One Level, One Character, One mechanic
3.) A fact that I picked up online: Majority of the game created are multiplayer or against the clock type mechanics.
Our team was perfectly balanced: We had an artist (my partner), a sound editor, two programmers, and a writer/ assistant (me). We had only a few hours to come up with a game idea. It was nice to hear everyone's thoughts and my partner pointed out to me that I was very good at making sure that everyone's opinions were heard. After we came up with an idea, I started to set up our game jam webpage with information about the game, the team members and creating the game icon. Back at the hotel, my partner had a full schedule of work to be completed, so he stayed up late Friday.
Saturday Morning rolled around and we had to wait until morning announcement was over (an hour after we arrived) to start working. The morning announcements offered a third chance to get a group if you didn't have one already. Since we had two programmers I tried to look on and learn from them, but I was needed elsewhere. I ended up assisting my artist; in the past, we had a hard time with sprite sheets. So I would clean the sprite sheets and save them as a unity package. This helped because now the programmers were able to focus on programming instead of trying to trim each sprite sheet. Then have my artist redo them if it were messy. Instead, I would tell him to fix something and work out all the bugs ahead of time. I attempted to assist my music editor with any questions he had since this was his first game ever. Then I assisted the programmers in creating unity packages of canvases with text on them for the how to play and start menu. Saturday night was night two of my partner staying up late.
Sunday, was our last chance to get everything in, in only five hours. We were cramming and I must say seeing the project come together was amazing. I was able to contribute my last piece of the puzzle; showing my programmers the way I animate sprites in Unity. Doing this felt like it was the only thing I contributed to the game when it came to Unity. My partner said that I did a lot, but I feel like this was my Aha! Moment. (^_^) 3PM was our deadline to submit everything that we wanted to demo. Luckily, my team didn't rush at all. We didn't overdo our game and stuck to the one level, one character, one mechanic method. We set up ahead of time what would be considered "fluff" and what was absolutely necessary for game play. So at 2:45pm our game was uploaded and we were set up with a table number. Finally came the nervous moment, where we displayed our game for others to try..... Man, my nerves were getting to me. I was very happy to see that one of our programmers is used to encouraging people to view games and so he helped a lot with getting people to try our game. To me, the best part about this moment was not when the judges came to play our game, but all the feedback that we received. This is the first time I have had strangers test something that I took part in and give good reviews! It felt amazing!!!
I must say that for my first game jam I had a very good time and it was a smooth process. I wasn't caught up in making the next Kingdom Hearts, but instead caught up in making something playable. My partner and I had a post-mortem about the game jam and tit was overwhelming the amount of things we took out from the whole weekend. I would definitely, suggest attending and participating in a game jam for people interested in game development.
If you are interested below is a link to our game from GGJ. Please feel free to test it out and give me your thoughts. Also, click all of the team members and visit their sites. They are all amazing people with some awesome talent!
http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/tidal-defense