itch.io

Wow. You could probably teach me a lot. I am just now getting into game development and have only submitted one game for a game jam. I am making another game as a full project, but it is not at a position yet to playtest or publish alphas for.

Attached is a video of one final bug that I found related to the flashlight thing. the first part is me scrolling up too far, and second is me scrolling down. I don't think it's intentional, but it might be. It is a little laggy. I apologize.

Do you have a discord? it might be easier to communicate via that. If you do then I can give you my handle or you can give me yours.

Also, what do the green balls do? I tested them on some enemies and they don't seem to have any effect. Additionally, if you aim down and fire, you can bounce on the ball, and if you do this on a platform, the ball will continuously activate and deactivate the platform.

I did notice that the sticky walls were mostly fixed, but it does stick just a bit around corners, though much less than it did before.

I hope I'm not seeming annoying or anything. I just like helping. If I am annoying you at all please let me know.

You can not imagine how cool it is to me that I could help at least a small amount in the development of a game, especially in a custom engine. This is just awesome to watch happen. I wish you the best in the development of this game, and will continue to play it as it updates and gets bugs fixed.

I quite enjoyed my playthrough of this game, but I found a couple bugs that you might want to note in case you want to fix them before the jam ends. First of all: you can double jump forever. I don't think that was on purpose, but it might be. Secondly, going around corners or moving while pushed up against a wall is very difficult and you stick really badly. Cool game though.

I can't help with development, but I can try to offer some advice. If this is the first game jam for Junk Fighters (cool name btw), then read the tips below. If not, then I have no idea, but I wish you the best.

I have experienced a major issue before with a game jam for a game I was so excited to make. This game never saw the light of day because I submitted it too late and it glitched out. My first major tip that you should do regularly is keep a private version of the game of itch.io and re-upload your game every once in a while to make sure it works out of engine.

Second tip: make sure to pace yourself. If you have an idea for Junk FIghters that has the content of, say, Hollow Knight or Silksong, you're not finishing that in one game jam. You should flesh out what parts of the game you need for it to work, and do at least those. If you don't think that will take long, add a bit more content or small but cool things that just help the game work, but don't try to do everything at once, or you could fail and do nothing in the end.

Final tip: don't overwork yourself. This jam is a month long. that's plenty of time to make the first concept of a game, especially a bigger idea of a game. Just make sure that you continue to enjoy working on it and you're not turning it into a full-time job, otherwise you risk burnout. Pace, take breaks, and try to do other hobbies regularly to keep the enjoyment of the game going. It might seem counter-intuitive to work less on something, but less is more in this case.

TLDR: Keep a version of the game on itch, do the minimum content that you need for the game to work before going on to smaller things that just make it better, and pace yourself to avoid burnout. Game jams are not supposed to be easy, but they do work well as a motivator.

I use Unity🔗

Thanks! I do pixel art at pixel resolution, so texture file sizes will be much less than 2k. I also am the only programmer/developer on our team, so branching will also not be an issue, but I will make sure to learn that later in case our team grows.

I can't wait to play. Sounds really fun. How did you know that I like collecting things and boxes?

Ahh. My apologies. There is only one url spot to submit a video, meaning that on one project, you can only submit one video. That's all I know.

I don't know enough about the jam submission to answer that, but I think if you ask this question on the discord page you will probably get a better answer. I can say that if you are submitting 2 games, then yes 2 videos should be fine, but with just one game the game jam submission only has room for one url, so you cannot upload 2 videos in one submission.

I am using unity to make my game. Something that I already intended on having on was Unity version control, but does anyone know how to put a unity project into a Github repository? does it even need VSC? I've never uploaded my game files publicly before, and only made one other published game. Thank you in advance.

Just re-read it and saw that you were wanting to use AI for understanding, and I am pretty sure that's perfectly fine. I use chatgpt to figure things out as well in Unity. It acts in my cases more like a search engine compiler and I have it explain how it got the code that it generated so I don't have to ask it again. I never copy-paste code from chatgpt and rarely do I type out the exact same code it generated, but it helps a lot when videos don't teach anything until 13 minutes into a 15 minute tutorial. Obviously if Jonny sees this and says that that isn't allowed, it's his jam: his choices, but I think it should be fine.

He says the GEN AI part to refer to any ai that generates assets that appear in the final game, so art, music, code, etc. He mentions code specifically because so many people asked him and it was a special case where you really can't tell. And your 'technically' doesn't apply because the first thing he says is "No Gen AI". (don't worry, I get it. I am very technical as well and definitely fall into the "well actually" nerd category.) Just don't use AI if you can avoid it, and especially don't generate final assets with it.

One bug that I noticed (just in case you didn't already know about this) is that it seems as if the door's trigger box to go to the next level moves with the door or something. When I go to the door, I have to go up after the door opens to go to the next level.

In the rule video, this is the Gen AI portion from the transcript.

"No Gen AI. If you use Gen AI, you're a loser. We don't like you. Not only will you be disqualified, but you'll be banned from everything I have the power to ban you from. We're not going to have any of it. A lot of people have asked if they can use AI  code. We can't really police that, but don't. You can do better than that. AI is lame. We don't like it. "

Soooo... yea.

I like this. Can't wait to see the final version of it. Interesting idea.

Middle finger is fine to have if you need it. Jonny said PG 13 rules and gave movies as an example. I think you can make 1 video each but i don't know if you can submit 2 videos. you could probably post both on youtube (if you have a channel) or as a devlog on itch, but submissions probably have only one video submission spot.

Here are 3 topics that I found in this community for this jam related to music. Hope this helps a little bit.

https://itch.io/jam/bad-ideas-game-jam-2026/topic/6051883/drop-in-16-bit-rpg-mus...

https://itch.io/jam/bad-ideas-game-jam-2026/topic/6048731/where-do-you-guys-get-...

https://itch.io/jam/bad-ideas-game-jam-2026/topic/6062374/audio-soundtracks

This is the gen AI section of the rules in the rules video.

"No Gen AI. If you use Gen AI, you're a loser. We don't like you. Not only will you be disqualified, but you'll be banned from everything I have the power to ban you from. We're not going to have any of it. A lot of people have asked if they can use AI  code. We can't really police that, but don't. You can do better than that. AI is lame. We don't like it. "

And, audio is something that is being scored and someone will notice it, same as how it's possible to tell if a story was AI generated or something. there are signs that you can read if you know where to look, and someone will. Don't count on someone not noticing. There is royalty free music online (and another discussion in this community tab about music), for you to use.

Can I ask what you mean by "if done right?" I am just starting out in game development and want to know what would constitute not done right.

I know it's very unlikely, but does anyone have a pixelated line shader for unity that they would be willing to share with me? I tried making one on my own but it didn't work and can't find any tutorials. It just needs to have a color, pixels per unit, end point 1, and end point 2. Preferably, it would be able to have one point follow the mouse, but it's not a requirement. Thanks in advance.

I haven't even started making my game yet. I'm just brainstorming for now. You have plenty of time.

I personally am going record myself but put my little blobfish avatar over my face. I've also seen people use a 2d or 3d avatar to represent themselves. Just make sure to use captions since you can't read lips without a face. It seems like a small detail but believe me: not being able to see someone speak can make it very difficult to understand what they are saying.

Sorry. Just re-watched the video. here is the transcript for the gen-ai portion

"No Gen AI. If you use Gen AI, you're a loser. We don't like you. Not only will you be disqualified, but you'll be banned from everything I have the power to ban you from. We're not going to have any of it. A lot of people have asked if they can use AI  code. We can't really police that, but don't. You can do better than that. AI is lame. We don't like it. "

So yea. Don't use AI if you can help it.

I'm pretty sure Jonny says something about that in the rules video. I think it's ok, like he can't tell most of the time if you did, but try to make it mostly organic if you can. You should probably watch the rules video to see what he says about that, and if you haven't, he goes much more in depth on the rules in the video than the rules shown in the jam page do.

You need to make something in the YouTube short format, but I don't think you actually have to post the short in youtube, just submit the video alongside the game submission.

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot understand what you're saying. All I hear is robotic gibberish, something in the middle that sounds like "TOUCH GRASS SIMULATOR", and something about multiple endings. I gather that it's a touch grass simulator with multiple endings from that limited information. Am I on the right track?

Basically, the game is a factory game where you produce boxes for shipping companies. The main idea for it is that you need to create the machines themselves from scratch using a node based system. 

In the factory world itself, you have a relatively small area that will expand throughout the game but will always be a little cramped. In the circuitry world, you have infinite space and have different types of nodes to use for machines, such as input nodes, action nodes, and output nodes. for in/out nodes, you must say in the node which direction the machine takes input/puts output. For action nodes they just modify the input in some way.

To start the game, you have limited nodes allowed in the circuitry and limited unique machines. As the game progresses, you can put more nodes in the machines and have up to 10 unique machines. There are a few more specific things to make the game a bit more 'thinky' and make the player think 'outside the box'.

And this game produces boxes. You don't put anything in them, so everything in the game happens 'outside the box(es)'.

Is this game too dumb to continue with, or does it have potential?

Am I allowed to swear (minimally) in both textual and audial dialogue? Like could I have a character that says the F-word out loud and captions that say the F-word at the same time? I know only 1 instance of the F-word is allowed, but is audial cursing ok?

That looks awesome. What do you mean you're not good with logos? I have seen games entirely made in mspaint. I like the smiley in the C as well. use this as your logo. It matches the vibe of the name.

Thanks. I will try this out next time I work on the game.

taken literally, this game is not 'outside the box', but in the absence of a box, everything is outside it.

First off, if a game idea is a bad idea, it is probably what you want, considering that the jam is called BAD IDEAS game jam. I also really like the idea of the first one. I think that could be a really fun game if the idea is implemented correctly.

I am severely ADHD and struggle with passion burnout, where I will work on something super passionately with every spare moment until I get tired of it and stop working on it. I have trouble with pacing and time management. Does anyone else here struggle with the same thing, and what do you do to deal with it?

I have made one other game for a game jam, but I attempted to make another one way before that. It failed because I tried to submit it on the deadline and due to errors with memory, it wouldn't work. My biggest piece of advice is to check that your game works on itch.io every once in a while to see if there are any major bugs. Also, write out before you start what you want to add to the game, so you can scope out a rough 'schedule' and make sure that you can achieve everything in a month. One last piece of advice: if all else fails and the game can't be submitted (worst case scenario, I know) continue to work on the game if you have time, and maybe you can publish it yourself on your own time.

Bad game idea = stupid game idea = fun game idea. Simple math logic.

Also stupid games are the best games.

The lack of sound and the fact that I could not find my character made it a little difficult to play. Also, the stick figures in the tutorial broke my immersion significantly. Cool idea though.

Reminded me of legend of Zelda. Really cool digital card game.

This was cool, though I couldn't win and lost in only a few seconds every time.

The sounds were nostalgic.

It's a little hard to see what's going on. after fighting the bug in the room with the first disk I got softlocked walking into a wall. great game though