Only recently did I discover that I could develop non-text-based games by myself. That seems obvious to me now, but a few months ago I thought it was something that would be very difficult to teach myself and learn through the internet. I suppose this is because the only people in my life that developed games seemed to have vast knowledge of programming at their disposal, whereas I felt I had much less.

But lo and behold, I was able to start developing and soon discovered that the next Ludum Dare was a couple weeks away---the only game jam I had heard about casually as a general video game enthusiast. Now I'm on the other side of my first game jam. Because I plan on making many more games and jamming often, I want to document my firsts to remind my future self how far I have come.

Ludum Dare 41 was the first time I:

• participated in a game jam
• joined a Discord channel
• made a game about food
• made game objects that have an outline when hovered over
• recorded GIFs of my progress
• used a mouse pickup-and-drop mechanic
• missed out on a barbecue :sob:
• used parent objects and inheritance in my game engine
• submitted a bug report for my game engine
• implemented typewriter text
• put story in a game
• created music to use in a project
• implemented a feature late in development that accidentally made the game less satisfying
• made a game in 72 hours
• compiled a game to ship
• realized that I was missing something crucial in my compiled game when I thought it was complete (a game title image for the title screen)
• shipped a game
• created promotional images
• had the potential to monetize a creation of mine
• got feedback from internet people (thank y'all so much!)
• promoted something I made
• cooked red beans and rice (a delicious family recipe! (it was actually good when I made it too))
• watched my game played on a stream

Some of those progress GIFs:

We're all constantly learning new things whether we mean to or not, and I think one goal of jams is to grow our knowledge and test out something new.

No matter where you are in your game development journey---squeakily new or finely seasoned (perhaps grizzled), I'd love to hear about your firsts from LD41, either in the comments or from a link to a post you wrote. If you've done that and you're proud of your game, leave me a link (especially if it involves food or you're not at 20 ratings yet). Mine is here and it's about making sandwiches: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/ms-grunhildes-sandwiches