Glad you're confident. My project is going well this time around - solidified the concept pretty early, have made a lot of progress in the last few days, and I believe I have plenty of time to submit something I'll be happy with. I'm using procedural shaders to dress up all of my environmental assets - looks good so far, but I'm wondering if they'll dramatically hurt performance for people. I'll do some profiling tonight or tomorrow just to see how that side of things is going.
The theme implies what you want it to, and to say that the theme, "connections", has no implications towards story is an odd take. In any case, the ratings cover various elements of games. Yeah, not all games will make each of them an emphasis - welcome to game development. Plenty of deep-story games will not make use of innovative mechanics and likely will not score well there. A dystopian horror game with an emphasis on isolation and loneliness may not have much, if any music. And just because a game has a really creative mechanic, it might not be fun, or attractive to look at, or have good sound design. The art is in doing something well, making it fun and appealing, and gaining a reputation for that. Going into this with the idea that it's only fair if the categories apply equally to all games is setting yourself up for disappointment. Focus on the ratings you get for the elements you emphasize in your game.
In my opinion, using AI to fill in for skill deficits when you are new and/or unskilled is where people run into the biggest issues. Don't have programming skills? Good luck validating AI-generated code, or fixing anything it does wrong. Think AI will cover for a lack of art skill? AI art is often discernible from human-created art, and of all the uses of AI in game dev, its use to create visuals and art assets is often disliked the most. If you're going to use AI for visuals, at least spend a lot of time to try to get a cohesive look and feel to the game.
Understand that game jams, especially the GameDev.tv game jams, are about learning and seeing what people can do with game design and development in a short period of time. The overuse of AI goes against the spirit of learning, and isn't likely to do a good job showing what a person (of any skill level) can do within the time limits.
That said, I think there are ways to use AI artistically, and there is a spectrum of how people use it ranging from creating obvious, soulless slop, to something that might even be impressive. But without art direction skills, and the skills to modify and adjust the assets AI might create for you, people probably won't appreciate it much.
Build up your programming skills, work on art direction skills, and then down the road, maybe using AI as an extension of your own skills will allow you to produce something that won't come off sloppy, and will clearly demonstrate your own care and attention to its production.
If you submit something you started before the game jam starts, then yes, it will be rejected. The jam starts in a couple of days and gives you a good amount of time to come up with something new and small and submit it. Think of what you know well, as far as development and design goes, and then start a small game with that when the jam begins a couple of days from now. If you do that and submit it by the time the jam ends, I'll play the game.
The purpose and spirit of a jam is to create something inside of the time the jam begins and ends. A jam is not for submitting existing completed projects, or projects that were started at any point before the beginning of the jam. A game created for a jam can then be further developed into a larger, more complete game after it ends. Festivals and other types of events are often for projects started before the event begins (like Steam NextFest) - maybe you were thinking this jam was more like that.
I hope you submit something new for the jam. Like I said, if you do, I'll play it. Take it easy.
I don't understand your response. The point of a game jam is to start creating the game when the game jam begins and then submit it before it ends. A project you started earlier than the beginning of the game jam is not permitted to be your submission.
Yeah, more people might play it if it's a WebGL build simply because it's less work for the player. As LazarusCraven said, people will still play downloadable-only games. If you only have a downloadable version, consider the following to get as many people playing as possible:
Keep the download as small as possible
Include screenshots
Include a video
Include instructions
Have something written to share your game hook or premise without spoiling too much (if it's the type of game to suffer from spoilage)
All of these things apply to WebGL as well, to maximize players. It's a game jam, so people are forgiving of poor-ish optimization as long as the game is playable, and no one really expects professional copywriting. But putting in an effort will generally get rewarded with people giving your game a chance since that is usually visible from the person's page. Having a fun (and fun-looking) game helps, too. Good luck!
Additional Note:
WebGL has limitations. If you're not sure what those limitations are, especially for an unofficial solution to creating a WebGL build for Unreal, then it may be better to not even worry about it and just focus on a good downloadable build - otherwise, you might end up spending time on visuals or other gameplay elements that aren't supported in WebGL and will be disappointed.
Looking good. Keep at it! Those perfectionist voices can be difficult to silence.
I'm feeling very discouraged. I had such plans for my entry but I've lost so much time to various issues that I think, in large part, come down to my almost-year-long break from any substantial game development. I have had to scope down my concept, and while I think I now have the main technical issues resolved, I don't know how much I'll be able to do given that the jam is basically half-over. I do find it easier to put in longer sessions where level design and even asset creation is concerned, so I might have an easier time making progress in the remaining time than I think I will, but I just don't feel good about it.
Anyway, I'll keep at it. Best of luck to you and everyone else.
I think that any assets you use for the game that you didn't create during the jam have to be freely available to everyone. Unless you make them freely available for people to use going forward, I don't think your use of them would be legit.
I sympathize with you because I have some old music I made that I would use if I could.
There's nothing about the game you uploaded that makes it a game - it looks like it's just a low-effort motion to just get a free course and goes completely against the spirit of the game jam. I downloaded and played it myself - it is just a texture-painted terrain with a bunch of cylinders; there is no gameplay. Not to mention the description of the game is completely misleading, given what the "game" actually is.
Bear in mind that some elements of the build will not be available for all platforms, especially with graphical elements - I ran into this last year where the WebGL build I created didn't have certain visual effects that were present in the Windows build.
The jam ends on June 2nd for no one - seems they made a mistake in the video since the term of the jam is 10 full days from the moment it starts. For people that live between eastern Europe and the western Pacific, it will end on June 4th due to time zone differences. For everyone living between the central Pacific and central European time zones, it will end on June 3rd.
You can look at this time zone map to check yourself.
Those are fine. The only "free" assets not allowed are assets that normally cost money, but are given away for free. And of course, not all free assets have the same licenses - some require attribution to the author(s) for you to legitimately use freely - so make sure to include such attributions in the game, if necessary.
From the rules on the Overview page:
Free assets only! Using paid assets is NOT allowed, but free assets and those under an open source licenses like CC0 are allowed. Note: this doesn't include paid assets that you got for free, only freely available assets are allowed.
A fellow horror dev; I look forward to seeing what you produce. Last time I participated in this jam, I made the mistake of switching to a different game concept a few days in only to switch back to the original concept a few days before the end, costing polish and other features I no longer had time to implement. I've started following you to make it easy to look you up again and check out your submission. Good luck!
I've given you a follow to make sure I come back around to see what you ended up doing for this jam. I spent most of the last year largely not doing any gamedev, though I worked in the industry doing QA for a couple of studios. I've gotten back into it in the last month or so, but man I feel rusty, overall... though it is really starting to come back to me. Good luck!
Thanks for the comment! I agree with your feedback - ambient noise could have made a significant difference. I did my own little post-mortem and looked at which skill deficits made certain things take a lot longer to implement (or get axed from the game entirely). I hope to participate next year and submit something that I am much more satisfied with. I appreciate your taking the time to play the game - I'll check out your playthrough. Take it easy.
It's remarkable how much time can be spent on things other than the coding or other raw development tasks. They're really not joking when they suggest just spending a third of the jam's time on dev and the rest on bug fixing, playtesting, polish, and ultimately publishing.
Thanks for your generous feedback! I had so many plans for this game, it's kind of silly to think about, given the timeframe. I hadn't done much in Unity for a few months and got into this thinking I was more fresh on how to do certain things and I ended up scoping beyond features that I comfortably knew how to implement. Next year, I hope to have something that will be less rushed at the end. If nothing else, I'm glad I accomplished providing a scary experience!
Thanks for the comment! I'm looking to work on a short project over a few months and am considering doing something along the lines of what this game was, with much, much more polish - I certainly learned a lot from the experience of this jam. It is possible to escape the maze, but it's easy to miss - in the future, I need to playtest it more with people other than myself to see just how difficult it is. I agree with the use of environmental sounds - I had intended to have sound for the various steam pipes, footsteps, various other noises from the monster, etc. I also originally planned to have one or two more creatures wandering the hallways looking for you. And getting the right amount of ambient lighting was tricky (the original version had the player use a flashlight, and everything was pitch black darkness. I'll do better next time:) Anyway, thanks for playing, and I hope to see you participate in next year's jam as well.
Thanks for playing! Yeah, the monster has a 3D sound audiosource that is audible up to a certain distance, this means it will play through walls - which might explain why you heard it without seeing it. The game really didn't end up meeting the vision I had for it, but at least just about everyone seems to be getting "creepy" vibes from it, which accomplishes one of my bigger goals:) Thanks again!
Great job. Apart from a janky camera in tight spots, it looks and plays really well. I saw you had issues with the WebGL version, so I played the downloadable Windows build. The mechanic of switching to 2D on different planes was really effective for this kind of stealth/escape game! The "completeness" of the game, including volume controls, multiple well-crafted levels, nice sound effects and music, and no bugs (that I experienced) was really nice. I hope to craft such an entry for next year's jam (and other jams I might participate in until then). Very well done!
Good job! I ran into an issue where the mouse pointer left the game view/port. I had that same issue with mine. For the solution, look up "cursor locking" for webgl in Unity's manual. They have some code you can attach to an object in the scene that will make it so that the cursor stays in the game port unless the player presses Esc. Anyway, nice take on the theme, nice mechanics (I love tower defense games that allow the player to participate directly in the fight), nice use of sound and music.
Nice game! The levels got to be pretty challenging and triggered that tenacious, "one more try" syndrome that makes these kinds of games interesting - this could turn into something if you wanted to put the time in.
Great job! I was trying hard to stay alive but once I found out I could possess other living things after death, I leaned hard into that! Nice interpretation of theme, fun, cheeky story, and nice crafting of "puzzles" that required something more than just mindlessly throwing oneself at the enemies in order to win.
Thanks for checking out the game! I feel that some of the atmospherics came out well, and if I'd been able to implement more of what I envisioned for it, it would likely have been quite a bit better - but that's game jams in a nutshell (at least for first-timers), isn't it? I learned a lot and hope to have something even better next time.
Thanks for the comment. Yeah, it's certainly got lots of room to be improved upon - I had much more vision for it, but fell short due to a mid-week loss of confidence in the idea, then spent several days on a different project for the jam, then came back to this one.... needless to say, I learned a lot about scoping, as well as where the weak points in my skills are so that some of the more rudimentary aspects of polishing a game are easier to implement! In any case, I appreciate that you checked it out! Maybe my submission next year will be much better:)
Thanks for the comment. While it came out far more rough around the edges than I'd have liked, I felt that the atmosphere managed to come out okay. Thanks for playing the game!
I didn't quite finish it, but I got a good feel for the boss fight. I thought the mechanic of that sphere ability placing the player into the time an hour previous (when everything is intact) was interesting and well done. I'm sure there are some graphical optimizations you could make (should you pursue this game further) - my 1080 Ti was running hard through the whole experience. Great job with the level, boss fight, and ability designs!
Very "on-theme". I played for a bit but never completed, though - a few times, the dimensional switching put me into places where I was stuck and at the mercy of whatever was attacking me, but these kinds of rough edges are to be expected in jams. Good job with your entry!
