Unable to start until mid-day today and unable to continue working after mid-day tomorrow, this jam is proving to be very much a test of my time-management skills. Still, it's a fun challenge to see what I can get done in, essentially, just a day's worth of hours.

My idea is a game that takes place on a desktop that is so terribly fragmented there is hardly any space left to install new programs. You're tasked with running a defragmentation program, all the while protecting what little disk space you have left. It's a classic tower defence game, basically.

Originally, I had planned a neat little unique mechanic where the boundaries of windows you dragged around would act as the "track" for each wave, but after an hour messing with pathfinding to little avail I ultimately scrapped that in favour of a linear, pre-placed course. I think I would rather have a functional game at the end of this that isn't particularly boundary breaking instead of a couple of cool ideas that aren't properly implemented.

Though, I do hope for the next jam I'm able to use the full 72 hours instead of having to cobble something together in just a fraction of the time!

I did a lot of today - concepts, sprites, even a tidbit of coding, however...neither me, nor my partner, enjoyed what we were working on. So, we quit. It was a difficult decision - at least for me, since I've been waiting for it so long. I was hoping to have fun and learn something new, and in some way - I did! I was having a blast looking through forums and looking what y'all have been working on, and I probably will look here from time to time! And learned that there's nothing fun doing something that you don't genuinely enjoy and at the end of the day it's not going to be pleasant either for the developer and the player. And that it might be okay to quit, if you feel like doing so...

Wishing good luck to everyone else and see y'all next time! With love and a lot of other mixed feelings, Ule.

Sharing the second important line of the process of creating this rhythm-game. https://youtu.be/vIeA0jZpXM0?si=UrBSPm_pMObqt5Sb

This is our 3rd game jam, this time with one new team member and some have opted out. A little taste of the art.... title is tentative, so I removed it from this image for now.

Instead of using Godot like I normally do, I've opted to make a PICO-8 game this time around. I'm only a few hours in, but here's my progress so far:

My interpretation of the theme is a game where the amount of safe space for the player becomes increasingly limited, because the cave becomes more flooded with every three steps taken.

I assure you, the code behind all this is exactly as janky as you think it is.

This is my first ever game jam! With my teammate, composer Johanum, we're going to make CLAUSTRO!

CLAUSTRO is referred to "Claustrophobia". We decided to make a game about the fear of tight places or, let's put it this way; "Limited Space"!

Making this game in Godot is relatively easier, as I already am using it for my other game HOPE, the mechanics are more familiar to me so it wasn't such a hassle. Though, the difference is this is a platformer and the other one is top down!

This is an opportunity for me to present something interesting and learn a lot from it, instead of being stuck in working on the same thing everyday haha.

Here are some pictures of the progress so far! 😁!

image2023-09-30215803787.png

The game is mostly playable, I need to add the round win condition, and increasing difficulty. And finally fix up the background :) Then sound effects (I'm too untalented to create music) and maybe some polish if time is left.

You're stranded on the space station and try to survive the onslaught with just your cheapo repellent gun (not pictured). It can push off any meteors in its path, but it's slow to recharge.

I decided to switch from my usual engine (Unity) to Godot for this game jam. I'm enjoying the challenge of relearning the basics!

I am creating something in Unreal Engine 5.

The floor is lava part of the game!

And I feel like I have achieved nothing at all.

Even simple stuff like dashing takes me almost one hour, according to my measurement on Toggl.

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision (Stevie Wonder).

What do you think some dueling wizards!

So I've decided to ditch Unity and try out the Stride engine. So far: it's horrible and I love it. I had to do so many different hacks to get the most basic features working which is really cool. Next jam I'll probably write libraries that will do the work for me, but for now I have to figure out things like the fullscreen toggle.

I've also decided to use my own "remote inspector" for viewing logs. It crashes often (especially when closing the game), but I hope it will be useful for me and others in the future. Right now it's a console app, but I'm planning to make a proper one in godot.

Got a late start, due to timezone and sleeping in, but it's coming along nicely. The bare game-loop is almost done (it's only missing a lose-state). Still lots of mechanics missing, that'll make it an actual game, but I'm quite pleased.

The last few jams have all been failures for me due to poor mental health, so it feels really good to be able to do some coding again! :)

Collision is kinda done, but requires all enemies to have the same hitbox at the moment due to performance (might not actually be an issue, will test this tomorrow)

Knock-back was a lot of fun to implement, as was giving bullets some of your own momentum when firing.

There is so much more to do tomorrow, but it should all be fun stuff, like upgrades to your character and other cool things. (Oh, and the things that make the name actually make sense...)

Have not thought about music or sfx yet. Hopefully I can whip up something chip-tuney... I've never made music for a game before and have very little experience with music making in general - thinking of using BeepBox and bfxr.

I hope everyone else is having a blast and not overdoing it. Take it easy :)

~Laura

That's the post

This has probably been done before but I'm having lots of fun designing levels with this mechanic!

Now just to make a million levels, make it actually work, and fix all the bugs. https://youtu.be/YmsGSLTwWM4

With the first day almost over, please keep in mind that not everyone in this jam is running Windows. Many participants though use established platforms like Unity, Godot or even Pico8 which are capable of building for multiple platforms.

Web builds are the most accessible, but can be buggy or low performant. If a web build does not work for your game, please try and publish builds for linux and mac, too.

We want to rate your game, and you want us to rate your game. But that is only possible if we can play it.

Obviously, if that doesnt work due to a more exotic engine or some fancy schmancy selfmade toolkit :wink: we understand that this is not possible.

I'm a bit late, but it's time to start writting the main gameplay!

PS: Yes, I'm using my own game engine. :smile: