Devlog #1: Post-Jam Thoughts

Mask Off was created during the LubJam / Global Game Jam 2026, with the theme “MASK” Our team had 48 hours, from Jan 30, 17:00 to Feb 01, 17:00, to design, build, and submit a playable game.

The spark behind the mask

The idea for Mask Off, 4-player brawler / beat-each-other-up, like last year, was decided almost immidietaly. When the official theme “MASK” dropped, it was a match made in heaven. Instead of just exotic character designs, the theme gave us the perfect excuse to “funk up” the mechanics with quirky, power-granting masks.

9 People, 1 Keyboard

We showed up as a massive squad of nine: 7x university friends and 2x new collaborators.

Initially, we planned to split into two smaller teams to avoid the “too many cooks” trap. But once the Mask Off pitch was on the table, the energy shifted. We decided to stick together as one large unit. The real challenge wasn’t just the code, but the orchestration; making sure everyone had a voice and a task without cannibalizing each other’s work. It was “anti-beat-em-up” management for a beat-em-up game. Of sorts.

Game designer inspo

To keep the chaos focused, we leaned on Scott Rogers’ principles of ‘Clear Goals’ and ‘Call to Action.’ By making the spawning mask the undeniable focal point of the arena, we ensured that both the players and our 9-person dev team stayed aligned on what mattered most: the fight for the mask[^1].

Workflows

Distributing the art was a dream. The “sketchbook-like” aesthetic was a perfect fit for our artists, Gabriela and Jul, allowing them to lean into a doodle style.

We even managed to sneak in a homage to our university lectures: the figura serpentinata, our Faculty’s building or even a professor! On the audio side, Ziutor brought a Y2K-inspired soundscape that gave the doodle world its funky, energetic soul.

Game’s logic

We decided to spice up the project and implement a Finite State Machine (FSM) to handle everything from standard movement to the “Masked” power-up states. It was a new and challanging way to start the work, while keeping the code clean and allowed different people to work on “Jumping” or “Attacking” without breaking the whole player controller.

• StateMachine - Routes Godot callbacks and transitions
• Idle/Walk/Jump - Core movement logic
• AttackState - Handles the brawling & mask powers
• DeathState - Cleanup and respawn logic

Smelly farts

It wasn’t all smooth sailing. The UI workflow was our biggest hurdle; at one point, we realized we had accidentally built the same menu twice because of a communication gap! To fix it, I locked in on Saturday night to draft a clear one-pager.md (also based on Scott Rogers’) and a amplified the backlog on GitHub Projects (first time using that tool, Jira is too clunky for the Jams and setting up an Excel is a hustle). The big lesson: sub-tasks are a trap. In a jam, you need big, checkable goals, not micro-management!

And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling bugs!

As the clock ticked toward the Sunday deadline, we leaned into the “funky” soul of the project. We decided to go onomatopeias for our SFX, both fighting sound effects and… farts. Since it’s a doodly-flash-gamey-goofy brawler, that folksy humor felt right at home. We even hid some in the menus that proc at random during gameplay… So keep both ears open! ;)

My favorite part, however, was “masking” a game inside a game with Felipe. We managed to hide a small Icy Tower tribute level, activatable with the classic Konami Code. Rest of the team did not know!

To parse or not to parse

It wouldn’t be a LubJam without a near-disaster. Two hours before the deadline, we encountered three .tscn parse errors. While last year we needed the community to help us save our repo from a GIT meltdown, this time we stayed calm and fixed it ourselves. One could say it was quite cinematic.

Results & what we learned

We barely managed to submit on time. To be honest, the game is currently turbo-deluxe full of bugs. While we’re proud of what we achieved, Mask Off won’t be a long-living project. Our plan is to squash the most game-breaking bugs, polish it into a loveable and marketable state, and then move on to the next adventure.

What we’re taking away:

• Use GitHub Projects! Create and close those issues!
• Learn to use GitHub (kind of). Some of us had to see it in practice, yet.
• 3 hours of sleep is the perfect amount.
• We still need to learn how to cut features faster to leave more time for polishing.

Not as much learning as the last time, overall we are all proud of ourselves. It felt more like a test of our journey as game devs so far :)

[^1]: Rogers Scott, Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2010.