Posted June 26, 2021 by foxtrot-roger
So before I continue expanding on the concept, let's look back at what I learned during the GMTK 2021 game jam.
Day 1 :
Not sure I would join, I tough of a few ideas looking at synonyms for the theme, I ended up with the idea of a dating app where you have to match people together to make money to pay your rent. Then I had a good night sleep.
Day 2 :
Decided to join the jam and scrapped the idea because I wasn't sure that it would be fun to play and it would be too complex to finish it with my limited gamedev experience.
I hacked a simple prototype of the main mechanic, using Unity2D physics and a bit of custom code to pull objects together, tweaked it until I felt like it was enjoyable to use even without anything else (no levels, no sound, no menus, default unity sprites, ...) Then I created a few levels and a level loader.
Day 3 :
Added more levels, added splash screen, added a slow motion button to make the game easier and allow me to make more difficult levels, added skin button for all levels to allow players to experience all the mechanics.
Tried to remove the default sprites look for the game and decided to go for a scribble look for the game.
Days 4 to 9 :
I tried posting my game in the GMTK dicord, got 0 traction with that, the best I could get was adding "rate and comment my game and I'll rate yours" in the Discord post to have 1 or 2 views.
I tried joining streams but that barely translated to views or ratings and was way too time consuming as most streamers require you to be in the stream to play your game.
I joined the rate exchange on another Discord which yielded most of the ratings I got.
First thing that comes to mind is music and SFX, I wouldn't even know what software to use for that so the game had no sound and based on the comments it reduced the presentation so that's something I should learn, at least the basics.
Next thing I did well is the fun part of the game, based on the comments and the final score, the game was fun to play, here is what I gathered from the feedback and watching people play:
The next big downside for me was, the presentation. The scribble art style worked really well for some people but I believe some people hated it. It was however really quick to execute (about 4 hours to make everything, including a custom font). The lack of any sound in the game is probably one of the reasons I scored lower in Presentation. Next would be the main menu which was, well, crap...
Getting people to even visit the game page was the biggest challenge post submission, I put 0 effort in the game page so I got zero investment from viewers, makes complete sense. I tried raising the game a bit by adding gifs of some levels but I definitely need to work on the presentation of the game in the list to make people want to click on it. However thanks to the jam, I could get view by a bit of promotion: