This was my third game jam. I learned so much this time around.

The biggest thing I realized: in a short jam like this, trying to do everything alone just doesn't work. The planning took less than an hour at the start. I thought everything was going smoothly. It wasn't.

Up until now I'd only made story-focused visual novels, so this was my first time building a system-driven game. I just couldn't implement my own design on my own. So for the first time, I tried using AI as a coding tool.

The result was kind of incredible. Everything got built exactly the way I'd planned it. But here's what I really learned: the moment one thing breaks, you can't fix it unless you understand the whole structure yourself. AI can build fast, but only the person who actually understands the code can keep it alive.

So in the end, what matters is the person using the tool. I felt that one all the way down to my bones.

I think I'm going to sit out short 3-day jams like this until I level up my GDScript. I'm going to take my time and build my fundamentals, then come back. I only got 8 hours of sleep across these 3 days. I'm wrecked.

Whether you finished or not, I think the fact that you showed up and tried is what counts. Hope you're all happy out there. Goodnight, I'm about to collapse.

The thing that I've learned is that you should do as many sessions as you'd like.
If you're tired, hungry- just go do something about it. Even if your head is empty, stand up - look out the window, refresh yourself.
Don't put finishing the game as priority.

When actually making the game I usually put gameplay first. That will make game breaking bugs show earlier and more possible to fix.
I can always change placeholder sprites and sounds, but entire scripts are kind of set in stone.

"Whether you finished or not, I think the fact that you showed up and tried is what counts."
That reminds me of my first game jam. It was about diving.
I spent so much time on the diver and water fading to darkness effects that I never did any fish. Eventually I just made it a swimming simulator and made text scroll by explaining how I'm still proud of what I made, even though it barely fit the theme with no gameplay. Uploaded it anyway, I think that's also important.

Get some sleep! This was my second Jame Gam solo, and if there's one thing I learned from the first one, its: If you're crunching, you overscoped. The first one I participated in, I did the same as you. I started Friday @ 5:30~ and submitted Sunday like 3 mins before deadline, about 4:50 something. I slept about 10 hours in that time span. Not healthy!

I went into this one trying to have a healthy relationship with the work! I accomplished what I wanted, but I did have to cut some features that would have made it better. I originally wanted there to be upgrades every night you rested. I couldn't do that, I wanted to make my own music,  and I also ran out of time for a tutorial. All of those were pretty important to me. However overall, these game jams are about learning! Going to play yours after I finish typing this. 

Get some rest, even completing a game jam is celebration worthy!

Yeah, kind of. I cut quite a few features along the way (era backgrounds, story cutscenes between time jumps, a multi-resource capsule system, cascade score multipliers), and a few core mechanics got pulled back to the classic Mario & Yoshi formula because my own designs weren't reading right. What shipped is a tighter version of the plan: 60s score-attack puzzler, time mechanics, online leaderboard with a live web view..

Your AI point is true: "AI can build fast, but only the person who actually understands the code can keep it alive." Exactly that. I used Claude Code as a pair-programmer and it ripped — but only because I was reading every line and knew where to look when something broke (like I was the teamleader and he was my junior employee). Had a head start on the procedural sprite generation from another prototype too — that helped.

8 hours of sleep in 3 days is rough — go rest! Sitting out short jams to level up your fundamentals sounds like the right call. Looking forward to what you build next.

Seems like a common experience, but while I'm satisfied with the finished result, the main thing I set out to do was learning how to work in a healthy and paced way, which I failed spectacularly at, but I'll keep doing jams until I learn to put my needs before the game's.

I have to say that this is my first game jam and it was a very cool experience, i had no issure regarding sleep but i don't think it was very healthy for me to stay around 12/13 hours a day to make the game but ignoring that it was a prety experience (btw i am realy sorry that i uploaded the game but i did't upload the acutal game files, this is my first time doing this as mentioned and thanks to the tireness i didn't realize that the game was missing)