Hey everyone.

First time doing something like this and I'm pretty excited. Admittedly, I don't have a lot of game making experience, but I'm hoping my narrative skills will help make up for areas where my gameplay lacks a bit. Also going to be solo for my first ever game jam. That feels like it might be a mistake but I couldn't wrangle friends together at short notice, and I feel weird teaming up with strangers, so I'm betting on myself.

I was wondering whether there's a general preference when it comes to planning games; Do you prefer to plan the kind of game you want to make and then find ways to make it fit the theme, or do you base your game idea off of the theme itself?

I spent the morning writing up some game ideas that should fit the remaining themes in the Big Round voting. Some of my ideas are definitely weaker/less connected to the themes than others, but if nothing else it's given me an idea of the sort of things I need to learn how to make before Friday (such as dialogue systems, timers, movement etc.)

My current plan is to use Godot and Piskel if the theme leads me towards platformers/puzzles, or TyranoBuilder and ClipStudio if it leads me towards visual novels/Point-and-Click Adventure Games. I've got a lot more experience with Tyranobuilder so it would be less stressful to do a Visual Novel project, but I think I'd learn a lot more by doing something in Godot.

Either way, nervous but excited to get started. Good luck, everyone!