Game Jam
A game jam is an event where game developers challenge themselves to create a complete game, digital or otherwise, usually under a certain set of agreed upon limitations. For a while I had been looking to participate in a Jam so when a few friends of mine were discussing whether or not to join the Ludum Dare 49th Game Jam I knew I had to be part of it.
There were a few rules set for this particular jam: The game needed to be completed over the course of 72 hours, the game needed to be related to a theme which would be revealed when the event began and most, preferably all, the assets for the game should be made during the time of the project. On top of this, we also wanted to make sure the project was fun and not too draining. This meant that we needed to ensure we got proper amounts of sleep and that we took a healthy amount of breaks.
Making a game in only 72 hours can be a challenge and we made preparations ahead of time to make sure we could finish a game under these conditions. One of the big choises we made during this time was choosing our engine. After a small amount of deliberation, we elected to work in the Unity engine. We chose this because it was the engine the group as a whole had the most experience, and felt most comfortable, working in at the time.
We stayed up late on the day the event began to learn what the year's theme would be as this was revealed at midnight and found out it was "Unstable". We quickly did some brainstorming to determine what game we would make and eventually we landed on an idea where the player would try to answer e-mail on an old and unstable operating system. After having worked out some details we went to bed in preparation for the coming days of work.
When time came to turn in the game we were fairly happy with the product. Obviously there were bugs and problems that we didn't have time to iron out and there were features that we had to cut but for being done in just over a weekend we felt it was a fun and enjoyable game to play. We managed to get the majority of our intended features in and we received much positive feedback on the Ludum Dare website from other people who were also participating in the jam.
Feel free to give the game a try on Itch.io!