Hi people looking through the community section of the Brackeys Game Jam 2020.2 page. This jam will be my first ever, do you have any tips for me that could perhaps ease the process? I do know that it will be incredibly stressful, but I get the feeling it will be incredibly fun and rewarding and overall a good learning experience.
Hi Mikey, it's your first game jam which can be pretty tough on you all you need to do is spend time thinking about the theme and how you'll incorporate it into the core mechanic of your game think of something clever and crazy. Once you've wrapped your head around it. Focus on finishing the core mechanic. Think of what you want your game to be like and start building from that. If the game is about jumping make your you finish perfecting the jump mechanic then you build a game around that. You could add elements like enemies and obstacles and power ups not to make the game seem bulky but to in some way aid the core mechanic like a power-up that makes you jump higher won't help at all instead you can take that and twist it with a clever drawback that makes the player consider their options and desicions. Something fun yet challanging.
JUST REMEMBER
BUILD AROUND YOUR CORE MECHANIC.
I would also like to know which engine you use to develop.
Thanks.
By the time you're done with your core mechanic you can add game juice or feel just check out game Maker's toolkit a great channel to learn a lot about game design. The whole game would have not been fully completed but complete enough to fake it. Like if you've added sweet mechanics but there's no time to add even juicier mechanics no p. Just make sure you submit on time and your game rocks. Looking forward to play your game.
If you're new to game development, don't try to win... focus instead on making sure you come up with an idea you believe you could conceivably do and focus on getting it done.
That's a pro-level tip. I've been teaching people to program games for decades, including teenagers, college kids, and younger kids (I taught myself to program when I was 7, and I've taught kids that young, and kids with learning disabilities... programming isn't as hard as everyone thinks, it just takes a love for doing it and having a hand in creating something ex nihilo).
But a lot of my students get discouraged and quit because no matter how much I try to warn them against it, they can't help themselves but to try to get an end result that takes teams of hundreds of people years to make. So, please take it to heart when I say don't strive to win, strive to get a good main game loop that you really have fun with yourself and want to expand on it, and use the rest of the time to make a short secondary loop (if it's just a very simple game, use that time to polish it). Just make sure you get it done. Let yourself learn what it takes to do things on a steep deadline that may mean days of sleeplessness. Those are traits highly sought in the industry.
But then forget the industry. It's stupid. Take what you made that you really learned to enjoy and continue to develop that on your own. Make something big out of it, spend time working on it, build up an audience, and then you have one of two paths available to you...
(there's obviously many more than two, but here are two examples)
...either use it as a portfolio game to get into the industry, which I don't recommend, but you could, because showing you have the ability to create a whole thing from scratch is infinitely more useful than a piece of paper saying you got good grades in a school... or put it up on a crowdfunding site like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Patreon, or whatever else, and be your own boss. You can't expect that after just one jam, but if you try, that's where it would ultimately lead if you decide to keep with it.
Just don't bite off more than you can chew and you'll do fine.
Here's how that worked... When I was a kid I had a Commodore 64, and it was way expensive to get any of the media devices like the 1541 disk drive and the cassette deck, so you had to type in your games every time you wanted to play them. In the comic book section of my local corner convenience store they used to sell these books that were something like "Marvel Super Heroes Games You Can Program in BASIC!" I would get those, type in the program, play it, then alter things little by little until I figured out what they did until I could make my own games without looking at a book. From there, I've learned around a dozen programming languages (although I need refresher courses every time I switch).
I taught myself to read at five through almost the same method, by listening to Little Golden Books on Tape over and over again, rewinding them continually until I knew how letters worked. I did both of these entirely on my own without any kind of adult involvement. I say this not to brag, but for the exact opposite reason: I'm not some kind of super genius, I'm trying to make the point that everyone CAN be if they have the desire to be.
My 3 tips are:
1) Make a small game:
If you make something small you will finish it, and you'll have time to polish it. It's better to make a short and fun game than a big one but not finished.
2) Take breaks:
Sometimes you'll be struggling with an error, if you can't find the solution you'll be amazed by how much taking a break helps.
3) Have fun:
A simple but very important tip.
I did my first game jam last year, and have been enjoying them ever since. To list my tips I guess;
1- Don't over focus on polish - Come up with a plan you think you can get working and just get it playable, if you can easily polish it off with extra time at the end that’s great, but you don't want to spend so much time perfecting a mechanic you don't have time to make the actual levels to show it off.
2- Level before mechanic - This is my personal bias, but if you can't think of what level you could make with your mechanic, what kind of obstacle or activities you can do with it, near the start you may want to try something.
My first jam I had a character who could shrink, or go through certain objects. To come up with my puzzle I thought of the simplest obstacle that would apply to my game, a door, and ways I could show off my mechanics to get past said door.
3- Making a whole package - When making games we tend to get stuck focusing on one element of production at a time, game jams are a great chance to widen our view and focus on the entire development cycle in a quick burst. Come up with something small and simple, then plan out your time so with the aim of having a good finished package at the end (no matter how rough).
4- Have fun and don't overstress it - Have fun, don't worry if you coding is a bit shoddy or arts a bit of a mess, try to come up with something you think you can do, and see how it pans out, you will find you'll be much better at the end of this than the start.
