This Jam was made on Nov 8th, 2018 (23 days before the deadline)

ATTENTION:

KEEPS

FLEECH

BRUM

EYNX

ANYONE ELSE WHO HASN'T FINISHED ANYTHING SUBSTANTIAL IN 2+ YEARS (think about it, be honest) 

DONT THINK I WON'T FIND YOU IRL AND GIVE YOU A NOOGIE IF YOU CHICKEN OUT

NO MORE GAMEDEV LARPING. i'm sick of you promising devs being stuck on bigass unwieldy projects with no concrete goal and no end in sight. I was there, and it's not a good place to be. I know you think/thought you could handle it, but you're just a person. You can't beat your head against a brick wall for years without it wearing you down. It isn't a successful strategy and you're going to get burnt out on dev completely if you aren't careful. You need to refresh your approach. It's not giving up, it's aligning your goals and intentions with reality.

show me and show yourselves that you can actually finish a project. give yourself some confidence. give yourself some motivation to tackle bigger things. give yourself some experience with the hardest part of gamedev (finishing the game). start and finish a game in time to submit it to this jam page on delivery day. i will reward you with +1 STAR on your official dev rating (tm), exchangable for exactly 8 chicken tendies

Directions:

1. think of the smallest-scope idea you can

2. no, smaller.

3. seriously, make it fucking small. SMALL.

4. underestimate yourself for once and prove that you can actually finish something.

5. no, not just prototype it, literally finish it. it'll have a menu, a gameloop, graphics, sound, an ending (unless it's arcade style), everything. FINISHED.

6. You only have so many days to complete your project, so think about scheduling. be realistic. deliberately consider what needs to be completed by when to deliver. If completion boils down to the last 10% of your time in this stage you need to make your scope smaller, because things WILL take longer than you assume and you WILL go behind schedule. plan with that in mind.

7. 2d or 3d, but keep in mind that going 3d makes you twice as likely to fail

8. think newgrounds flash game in scale. You only have a few weeks here.

9. it doesn't have to be mind blowingly unique, just try to make something COMPLETE and ideally fun to play. make geometry wars. make NES castlevania. oh, too easy? fuck you, make it then, and make it really awesome to prove it. the simpler the core game is, the more time you'll have for improving and polishing every aspect of it before delivery.

10. if you start falling behind to the point where you won't have enough time to finish, make the necessary cuts. it's this or fail, your choice. there's no time for ego here

11. utilize your time, take this seriously and make the best game you can. If you just throw something together in a day and sit around for 2 weeks before delivery you're missing the point of this. 

this gamejam starts whenever you read this and decide to start, but it ends when the submissions open/close. The "jam" is only a 24 hour submission period, which you should have the game completely ready by. if you don't deliver your game during the jam window, you failed. high stakes, but it's good to work under pressure sometimes.

Once this jam is over and you've successfully delivered your tiny finished game, think about how to make a vertical slice feature-complete prototype in 1 or 2 months. think about how to make a finished game in 1 year. It's going to take longer than that because people suck at time management, but that's okay. The point is to set your sights on something actually realistic, rather than chasing after your perfect dream game while your life slowly falls apart around you. I know you don't think you're doing that but you are. 

it's okay to have big plans, but you need to realize those big plans aren't going to pan out right now and no you can't brute force it. They need to be worked up to. If you're such a good dev where's your fuckin game???? realize that the second half of development is like 10x harder than the first half. you NEED to practice it with smaller projects before tackling bigger ones.

making games is fucking hard. if anyone isn't able to participate due to other obligations i totally understand. you can always try this on your own time when you have a clearer schedule!

This is for anyone who wants to be successful in gamedev. If you're just devving for fun, that's totally fine, under that goal anything goes. but if you want to make this a viable career you need to take it seriously in a holistic way. This is coming from a place of love, i want you all to achieve great things. But the indefinite timelines need to end. xoxo ilu

just like

make game

//b