itch.io

Sounds good to me!  Will this be your first game, or just looking to get better at making a game?

Hi Matthias!  If you are open to using Discord, there's also a channel there for finding teams.  There's a stickied post in the community here with the link if you're interested!

No rewards in this jam.  Just for fun/practice!

I think it's good if you can set some sort of a goal for yourself during the jam, something you want to improve on or try out.  Or maybe the goal is just to have fun and enjoy the game dev experience!

For me, I really want to get better with my time management this time around. It seems like I picked the worst time to start doing these jams! But I've always got a lot of stuff going on, so I really need to learn how to work better with the time I do have.

I think it's good if you can set some sort of a goal for yourself during the jam, something you want to improve on or try out.  Or maybe the goal is just to have fun and enjoy the game dev experience!

For me, I really want to get better with my time management this time around. It seems like I picked the worst time to start doing these jams! But I've always got a lot of stuff going on, so I really need to learn how to work better with the time I do have.

Theme: Choose your path!

Theme: Choose your path!

Sorry about that!  New link: https://discord.gg/JkdqgE7B

Hi everyone!  I'm not really a Discord person myself, but an insightful jammer suggested it might be a nice way to help people connect.  With that great suggestion in mind, I've created a Discord for the practice jams: https://discord.gg/JkdqgE7B

Hi everyone!  I'm not really a Discord person myself, but an insightful jammer suggested it might be a nice way to help people connect.  With that great suggestion in mind, I've created a Discord for the practice jams: https://discord.gg/JkdqgE7B

I am so horrible at these types of games, so I don't think I was any good at it, but this is a fun, cute concept!  I like your colorful 80s look, combined with the Mii-style character, and though I'm emphatically NOT good at it, I still had fun trying to get little Luna across those clouds!

Now this is a horror game done right.  I liked your use of effects (the heartbeat/breathing, the echo-ey steps, the shaky camera and and graininess gave it a Blair Witch feel).  Very good use of power-ups and collectibles.  That nightmare thing came out of nowhere!  Felt like exploring a scene in Earthbound or Yokai Watch from hell!

This was really fun!  You did a really great job setting up the aesthetic, with the visuals and the music, and great gameplay concept!  Simple, yet challenging.

Hello!  No, I can't really think of anything.  Just try to make it safe for work.  This is a pretty loose affair, just for fun and practice, to help us all improve our skills.  Hopefully you guys will have fun!

Good!  Looking forward to the jam start!

Hello!  How are you?  Glad to have you join us!

No problem, of course you may call me CHG :)  I'm glad I was able to help!  I hope you have fun in the jam and that you find it valuable!

Hello, and welcome!  Glad to have you join us!  Typically, the idea is to start working on the game after the jam starts.  But you can work on practicing general skills before then.  Like for instance, say maybe you want to learn how to include dialog in a game, you can start practicing how to do that now, and then use what you've learned in the next game jam.  And then when the jam starts, you can start developing specifically for the jam.

In fact, I highly recommend using time between jams to build your "toolkit" and skill set.  That also goes for art, music, etc.  Like if you're an artist, you can be working on an archive of sprites, models, etc, that you can then later use in jams.  So just as we say you can use pre-existing assets (art and sound assets, etc) for game jams, you can use pre-existing knowledge and general coding tools (even those you've made yourself) as well.

Does that make sense?

Yep!  That's actually what I had in mind

Hello!  Well, initially I thought it would be the same deadline, but I think since this is ranked, I would give ya'll a full week, as you might approach things differently if you have the expectation of being voted on.  It would be the same theme.  I'm going to set it up today.

In the future, the two versions of the jam would run concurrently, so the same start and end times.

Does that sound fair to everyone?

Update: Ranked version of practice jam now open! https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-2-ranked-version

Hi everyone! As per a discussion that happened yesterday, I know that some of you would like to have ranking/voting in the jam. The suggestion that came up was to have an optional ranked jam, same theme, alongside the non-ranked, non-competitive version.  That way, people can get more feedback on their games, beyond just comments  And that could also be sort of like a "next step" for people who did the non-ranked practice jams and want to see how others view their skills.

My main question now, would you guys rather have the voting be only for jam participants, or for anyone with an itch.io account?  You can vote in Discord in the feedback channel, or use this poll:  https://forms.gle/HBvDbzoC6yzf3yea9

I'd like to set up the new, optional ranked version by tomorrow, so please get your vote in if you're interested!

Yep, like AxeAodren said, feel free to use any platform, and development tool.

Theme announced: https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-2/topic/3671902/theme-sleep

For style, it's whatever you'd like!

https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-2/topic/3671902/theme-sleep

Welp, guys, looks like I managed to do it again...I overslept and didn't post the theme. 

So the theme for this jam is....SLEEP, since that seems to be a recurring theme so far :P

Again, sorry for the delay.  I've added a few hours to the jam deadline to give ya'll back some of the time.

So go forth and jam, have fun, and meanwhile I'll be over here trying to fix my life lol

No problem!  Enjoy, whether it's this jam or a different one, and have a great week!

Hello!  No, there is no ranking for this particular jam series.  Maybe you can ask for specific feedback in the description/comments page for your submission?  

Hi everyone!  I'm not really a Discord person myself, but an insightful jammer suggested it might be a nice way to help people connect.  With that great suggestion in mind, I've created a Discord for the practice jams:

https://discord.gg/98chw6Ws

I'm glad you like it, thanks for letting me know :)

I do indeed plan to continue with them.  The second one is coming up tomorrow: https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-2

Yep! 

This is really good! A very well-thought out introduction to the components of a platformer.  I don't think I've seen a platformer that has a tutorial like this (granted, I don't really play a lot of platformers any more), but it seems the assumption is that people just automatically know the mechanics.   So this was a nice little departure from that assumption, especially for the keyboard, which is harder to figure out, as there are so many keys and keypress combinations compared to something like an NES controller.  Great work, and great concept!

I second this!  I'm glad you were able to also try something new with implementing the leaderboard...I know that 6 days is a short time even with skills you already have, so it's great that you also had a chance to experiment with a different feature as well.

Also really appreciate the option to adjust mouse sensitivity...that's always one of the first things I end up toggling around with 3d games, so it's a seemingly small, but welcome addition!

Hope you enjoyed the jam!

Thanks so much!  Yeah, I usually like to include more of a tutorial or some kind of guided in-game prompts or tasks to help players figure it out, rather than just text.  But time got away from me last week so it was a bit rougher around the edges this time around lol.

Hope you enjoyed the jam!

I like this, it's a fun little game!  Great choice of music and overall aesthetics (I'm a fan of synthwave, and I know you didn't compose the music, but you really captured that overall look and feel). It kind of reminds me of the sunset course in Rad Racer when I played it as a kid in the 80s (I don't know if you're familiar with that game: https://www.classic-games.net/nes/rad-racer-ii/)

Hello everyone!

We wrapped up our first practice jam, and now we have another one on the calendar for next week!  

Here is the link: https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-2 

If you participated in our first one, thanks, first of all.  I encourage you to reflect on your experience, think about what worked, what didn't, and what you will/won't do for next time.  Also, if you're interested in this second jam, you can also use this week to brush up on some tutorials or features for your chosen tool, or maybe start learning about a new tool you can use for next time!

Hello everyone!  I hope you all are enjoying working on your games so far!  I see some of you have submitted games, which is great!

It's ok if you want to submit a game, but didn't get to finish or polish it.  You can always post and get feedback, and if you like the idea and want to stick with it, you can continue to work on the game later.  You can feel free to come back and post your updates to the game later, if you'd like!

As I said, this is all for practice and pretty informal.  The important thing is that you have a chance to work on and improve your skills and games, and to hopefully spark your creativity.  If this leads to an idea for you that you want to develop further, or even if you've just found this whole experience fun and valuable, that's great and means that this jam has served its purpose!

I really didn't have as much time to work on my game as I wanted (lots of appointments this week and my time management kind of fell apart), but I'm still going to post what I have done so far tonight, just to prove that you don't have to put together a complete product for this event.  

If you guys want, you can also use this thread to post your thoughts, things you did well or struggled with, suggestions, etc.

I've also set up another jam starting next week (not this coming week), so we can keep working on our game dev skills.  If you'd like, you can use this coming week to brush up on some tutorials or skills for your development tools of choice, so that you'll be even more prepared for the next jam.

Happy development, everyone!

Interesting!  Maybe for a future jam :)

No problem!  Have fun!  I'm curious to see what everyone comes up with :)

Sorry about that!  https://itch.io/jam/practice-jam-1/topic/3634611/theme