Does looking game assets and/or researching other stuff for the game count towards the 3 hour timeframe? Just making sure.
“The time only counts for building your game, that is, any coding, making sound effects/music, art, and other assets. Writing a design doc, coming up with ideas, compiling your game, or making the itch.io page for it does not!”
As you aren’t making them and just looking for pre-made assets, I don’t believe it counts.
On my first few Trijams I only strictly counted the time when I was actively coding or making assets, and I still couldn't get down to 3 hours. Between looking up tutorials and design work and trying to plan how to do things, a 3 hour game would take me all day. But I could get it done, so that was the right challenge level for me.
Now I'm more likely to challenge myself by counting more of the little in-between things instead of stopping and starting my clock constantly, because I don't have all day. If I needed all day, the game wouldn't get done. So that's the right challenge for me now.
I hope to some day be at the level where I can make a game in 3 clock hours from start to finish. But the spirit of the time limit is to get a game made, so interpret the details in the way that works for you. And no one minds if a game took longer than 3 hours, it just isn't eligible to win.
Yeah, there's a really nice challenge with this jam at identifying and establishing scope, I've been digging these jams. My biggest issue from a personal development standpoint is hitting a bug or an issue where something isn't working, and burning time trying to fix it. My last jam took 4 hours and 33 minutes because of this. But other times it's smooth sailing, and it takes me a little under 3 hours, like some of my previous entries. Some times I don't care, so I'll go over a few minutes or 30 minutes.
I'm excited for this series of jams though, I like the idea of iterating on a project 3 times in a row and seeing how things improve each iteration.