[Jam Sesh] My Experience with GMTK 2025

My second game jam is in the books!

Overall, I'm very happy with the concept behind Chatterbox, and slightly disappointed with the execution. I'm not overly bothered by the short length (I only managed to get two levels developed), or the jankiness of some of the word prompts fitting together. My greatest regret is the imbalance of the stealth sequences. I struggled to find a sweet spot where the player was actually able to understand the entire conversation, while still feeling a challenge to actually "sneak around" - this is a clear place for playtesters to help out. When I was testing the game, there wasn't any reading comprehension, because I already knew the entirety of the dialogue. That's what happens when, y'know, you write the dialogue. Unfortunately, I had very little concept of what a random player would be experiencing, trying to decipher the conversation for the first time. How would they know what parts to listen in on, and which parts were okay to duck out into cover? Were the category/conflict prompts too similar? How would they know that the "subject" was supposed to be the company, rather than the person? Too many parts of this felt subjective, and the scoring system was so rudimentary that I felt I gave the player virtually no guidance going forward.

There were some other, smaller areas that need some polish as well. I really wish I had added a sound effect to indicate the rising "detection meter", culminating in a ding of some sort when you are detected. Along those lines, when you ARE detected, I think you should have had the choice to restart the dialogue, at least once or twice. Games are always about experimentation, and this would have allowed you to experiment with the detection system (how long can I stay in view without getting detected?)

The stealth component was certainly the furthest outside my comfort zone. The writing was a lot of work, especially since I ended up with ~100 possible prompts between the 8 "categories" and 5-6 "conflicts", each with 2-3 responses. But that comes more naturally to me - its just words after all, and I can talk all day long! But the stealth mechanics involved a much more rigid binary system - either it was correct, and the player could sneak around but actually gather info, or it was incorrect, and the game was unplayable. I think I found a decent baseline where the game is at least playable, and gives the sense of "sleuthing" that I intended for, but I certainly think my second or third stealth game could be a lot better. Not to mention adding the ability for the NPCs to walk, to turn, to have any sort of dynamic sensation to them.

Overall I spent ~15 hours programming this game, with an additional estimated ~4 hours of pure writing (not on the computer so I didn't track it). For a 96-hour game jam, this was a pretty low-effort project. I certainly would have liked to put more like 25-30 hours into it. I'm not sure exactly what to point to, but I didn't feel quite the same motivation for this project as I did the first one. Regardless, I think this was a solid project, one that was worth submission. I am happy I was able to put together a complete game with all the mechanics at least working, if not a little rudimentary. I definitely think this concept is more special than in my first game jam, one I would be a lot more likely to come back to in the future, especially if I was working with a more seasoned game designer who could take the stealth concepts I sloppily put together and turn them into truly impressive level components. I'd also like to flesh out the scoring of the responses selected a lot further - of course eventually turning it into a bit more of a "branching narrative" with some emphasis on "good" vs "bad" choices, maybe even tying together an overarching storyline. But that's a dream for another day!