Hey! I think this will be the first jam a lot of you are taking part in, and I can imagine you don't really know what to expect. Here's all of the tips and tricks I've picked up from taking part in >100 jams and hosting a bunch of my own too.
What can I do right now?
- Join the Discord! It's a great place to hang out, find a team, and get hyped before the jam starts :D
- Learn your engine of choice! If you don't know what to choose, there's another section below :) there's a month until the jam starts, I highly recommend making a little game and releasing it on itch so you know how that whole process works.
- Find a team! A lot of people will be jamming solo, and a lot of people will be looking for a team. There's a whole channel in Discord for it!
- I recommend sticking to 4 members or less. Any more tends to get very tricky to manage.
- Practice! It's a good idea to do a dry run, make something very small and make sure you know how to work together.
- Talk about time commitments early. It's a 7 day jam, some people can commit 8+ hours every day of that, some people can only work an hour a day. Both are fine, just communicate.
- Learn git! Version control is super useful even if you don't collab. Having checkpoints to roll back to if you break something has saved my hide many times ;) and you don't want to lose everything if your dog eats your
homeworkcomputer. - Join this - the "never joined a game jam game jam" that I'll be hosting fairly regularly I think, maybe monthly? Who knows, we'll see how this first one goes!
Theme & Jam Start
- Get a new project open in your engine and initialised on git before the start of the jam. Make sure there are snacks to hand (not just Doritos), make sure you've got plenty of water, etc.
- There will be a theme that is announced when the jam starts. Don't stress about it! If you can't think of a good idea straight away, that's not a problem. Theme is just one voting category, and it is highly subjective. In a game jam, execution is king - ideas don't actually matter too much :)
- Start scaffolding quickly - you can do this before you even have a game idea. Every game benefits from volume sliders, a pause menu, and maybe a main menu too (though if you're making a web game, it is often best to skip the menu!)
- The "Aha!" Moment: The ideal game concept should be short in scope but easy to expand. You want to design a mechanic that makes the player have a moment of "Oh, now I get it!" within the first minute of play.
Game Advice
- Keep the game to 5-10 minutes! It is better to have a short, polished experience than a long game that didn't get finished. Plus, most people will only play for 5 mins anyway!
- Scope is key! You need to figure out what it is possible for you to make in the time you have available. 7 days sounds like a long time, but if you can only commit an hour a day, that's 7 hours. It is totally possible to make a game in 7 hours, but it needs be nice and simple.
- I usually draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper, write Must Have on one side, and Nice To Have on the other. Every single feature you're considering adding to your game goes in one of these columns. Be brutal here!
- Don't be afraid to pivot! Sometimes you put a bunch of work into a mechanic and realize it just isn't fun. It is perfectly okay to scrap it and pivot to a simpler idea. Sunk cost fallacy will kill your game!
- Take shortcuts! This is not a game that you need to maintain long term, so don't worry about spaghetti code. Get to gameplay as quickly as you can :) if you want to make it a full steam/etc release later, it is absolutely fine (and encouraged) to start from scratch.
- Export early! Export a web build on Day 1. Even if it's just a moving cube, get it running in the browser. Get in the habit of exporting every day, and you won't have any nasty surprises with 1 hour to the submission deadline.
- Get other people to play! Since you're being good and releasing often, you can send it to other people and get their thoughts.
- Ask for help! Lots of helpful people are part of the Discord server. Don't get stuck spinning your wheels for hours when a quick message on Discord might help you solve your problem straight away :)
- Prioritise a web version! Often, web games get almost 10x the plays compared to download-only games. One of the best parts of a jam is having loads of people play :D
- Juice it or lose it! This is all the visual and audio flair that makes a game feel awesome to play. A simple mechanic can feel incredible with the right juice. For a masterclass on this, watch the legendary talks Juice It or Lose It by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho, and The Art of Screenshake by Jan Willem Nijman
Game Engines
- Unity is probably the engine most people will be using. There are lots of tutorials, and you'll be able to get help really quickly by asking on the server. However, it is bulky (10gb download) and takes a long time to build - probably 45 minutes for a first web build.
- Godot is going to be the next most popular engine for the jam. It's small, it's fast, and it is open source. GDScript is a nice, simple language, so it is easy to get start with. There is some great content on YouTube for learning. However, you can't build for web if you use C#, and the editor itself can be a little bit confusing.
- Unreal is a sponsor of the jam, but imo it is not worth using in game jams. It's a great, powerful engine that is well-suited for big projects, but Unreal does not build for web, and exports are often a few hundred megabytes at least - which means games made with Unreal don't get played by many people.
- Construct is a fantastic engine for game jams. It is built for web, it has a focus on 2D games, you don't need to code. You can use the free license for a jam project. There are no real downsides, except it doesn't do 3D!
- GameMaker is another great choice for beginners. It is a classic for 2D games with an incredibly powerful workflow for sprites, tiles, and rooms. You can use its visual GML (drag-and-drop system) or code in GML, which is very forgiving. However, its 3D capabilities are very limited, and the workflow can feel a bit rigid if you're used to traditional object-oriented coding.
- LÖVE (Love2D) is a phenomenal, lightweight framework for people who just want to write code without a bulky editor getting in the way. It uses Lua and is incredibly fast for prototyping 2D games. It has a very loyal game jam community. However, exporting to the web requires a bit of third-party setup (like love.js), which can be an annoying hurdle when you are rushing to submit in the final hour of a jam.
- Phaser is the go-to framework if you already know JavaScript or TypeScript. It's a pure code-based HTML5 framework (no visual editor), meaning it runs natively in the browser without any porting or bloated export sizes. It's insanely fast for 2D games and has great documentation, but because there's no visual interface, you have to build your scenes and place your UI elements purely through code.
- Pico-8 is a "fantasy console" that forces you to work within strict limitations: a 128x128 pixel display, 16 colors, and a built-in code, sprite, and sound editor. It is incredibly popular for game jams because the constraints stop you from over-scoping. It exports instantly to HTML5. If you want a cozy, retro vibe and don't mind writing Lua code, it's perfect. The limitation, of course, is that you are strictly bound to its retro constraints.
- Defold is a fantastic, lightweight 2D engine that deserves more love in game jams. It's built from the ground up for performance and exports perfectly to HTML5 with tiny file sizes. You script it using Lua, which is very quick to learn. The main downside is that the community is smaller than Unity or Godot, so finding jam-specific tutorials or quick help can be a bit harder.