This was my second time joining a game jam, but I’m not entirely new to game development or working on projects in general. I was definitely able to pass on what I learned from my first jam and avoid repeating the same mistakes.
One thing I’ve learned from doing game jams is how subjective difficulty can be for different players (especially because the developer perspective and player perspective can be very different). Different keyboard layouts, player preferences, and how punishing certain systems feel can all affect the experience, so balancing all of that is pretty challenging and time-consuming without playtesters.
My approach was to make the gameplay a bit more forgiving and include a key rebinding feature so players could adjust the controls to what works best for them. The intention was to be “better safe than sorry,” so at least players won’t quit without exploring the full content (though it still received mixed feedback).
My teammates were first-timers, so I tried to give a lot of guidance and share what I learned from previous experiences. There were definitely some ups and downs, though. I’m sure many people have encountered this in team projects, and I’ll say it openly since it’s a common reality: sometimes there’s someone who contributes very little, while others are extremely committed. I really appreciated the teammates who put in the effort.
There’s no such thing as doing things perfectly the first time, so we also spent time practicing how to properly integrate different types of art and sound assets into the engine so we wouldn’t run into import issues, and how to maintain consistent scaling with sprites. Sprite sheet animation techniques, tilemaps, and parallax backgrounds were other important things we practiced. I also pushed myself to improve techniques like input buffering, coyote time, FSM structure, and variable jump height with a jump-cut mechanic to help smooth out the gameplay.
Overall, it was still a valuable experience and a good learning process for everyone on the team, including myself. It helped me learn more about working with and managing a team, as well as better understand the player’s perspective when designing a game.