BEGINNER TO GAME JAM

Idea

We made our own Discord channel with categories like general, links, asset upload, program, art, sound, and voice channel. Then set up a figma file so everyone can edit and organize thoughts. Our Game Designer set up these keywords to get some ideas and then made a sketch of his ideas and shared it with everyone.

Design

1. Game Design - perspective (top-down, side scroller, 3D, 1st point perspective, etc. ) / type of game (shooter, rpg, farming simulator, etc.),
   1. detailed explanation of mechanics for everyone in the team to understand (reference, sketch, description, etc.),
   2. level design (where to place interactable object, where the player starts, where the enemy will spawn, etc.),
   3. character abilities (what character can do, what can they interact with, etc.),
   4. setting, story, endings, etc.
2. Art Design
   1. art-style (pixel, 3D or 2D art. If 2D art needs to have a consistent style thus harder)
   2. color palette (compliments the theme of the story. A certain color could indicate an interactable object. Example, red could be a danger, yellow could be allies, and green for a safe item)
   3. character design (if small in the game have to have noticeable feature/color, if bigger render in-game could be more detailed)
   4. environment sheet (how things look in comparison to the character too)
   5. if work with another person make sure you can share the file and it is compatible with the art software you are using. For example, when I was working on pixel art I was using "libresprite" a free version of "aseprite". My friend was using Aseprite and the file was transferable so it worked out fine.
3. Sound Design - list of sound effects, reference to the style of song needed, and list of how many tracks is needed for what setting and purpose.
   1. atmosphere sound, player walking, running, picking up objects, hitting obstacles, etc. Depending on what game it is many little effects can be made.
   2. Maybe variety in the same theme, quiet version, and intense version of the music.
   3. As for what program I asked the sound designer and she said that FL Studio and Ableton is the most popular while the more professional programs are Reaper or Nuendo.
4. Program - knowing what to program, what gaming engine software to use (unity, godot, unreal engine), setting up GitHub if working with another programmer, finding blueprint, searching up YouTube tutorials, etc.

Work

1. Game Designer can go through everyone’s work and make sure that the game is coming together. When the programmer is confused on what he/she has to do in particular the game designer will clear up the confusion.
2. Art - drawing time
   1. As to what to prioritize when drawing, for me it’s the player > environment > enemies > item > UI >>> cutscene (can use text or something to describe the story instead, cutscene is a luxury rather than a necessity), animating the character and enemies is not as important as having everything in place first. Make sure you can get all assets in the game first before doing the animation for each. For example, my friend drew Santa.png for our programmer first, and then later she gave the sprite sheet to him for the update.
   2. On that topic of animation, a lot of game engines allow sprite sheets for animation. It’s where you have a whole sheet of a single character.
   3. For the environment make sure that you’re exporting it based on the game’s screen size. I messed up in the game where I was in charge of drawing the background for the second game. I thought the game would move up and down so I exported the background unusually huge and I did all that before communicating with others. Thankfully it wasn’t the most damaging thing for this case because the object is rescaleable, but it is something that would be bad if the game was bigger or if there was less time.
3. Sound - atmosphere sound, player walking, running, picking up objects, hitting obstacles, etc. depending on what game it is
4. Music - loopable, main gameplay music, menu music if have time
5. Program - make the basic player movement in the game first using a temporary asset (point and click or WASD). Assign collision. Enemy, win system, damage > adding real asset in > ui, menu, etc.

Bug test

1. Check what needs to be improved, what more system is needed in the game, etc.
2. For example, I suggested that we add poo into the mix of the list of obstacles but then I got rejected saying that the poo’s color doesn’t stand out much and had to be removed. Take my poo back.
3. You could also let someone else uninvolved test the game, I had my mom try the game out and she thought it was fun.

Publish

1. Decorate website - cover (can be gif), banner, background, tutorial, etc.
2. Description - My suggestion is: a short premise summary, control, state how long it took in jam participated in, credits with link 
3. Publish on itch.io
4. Let whoever created the game page submit the game in the game jam page.
5. Done! Time to sleep.

Aftermath

1. Result, around a week to go rate other games.
2. Updated after submission debug the game (There was an invisible timer in the game, now removed.)

The result we got was 4th place out of 145 entries. The game designer and programmer are already working in the industry so everything went very smoothly. Since most members of the team are from the same country communication wasn’t a problem at all. 

Good points: 

• Efficient workflow, no problem everything went well except the game designer caught a cold on the second day. He got good rest which is more important than the game, but went back to help programming anyway.
• The sound designer worked fast and had her husband help with the Santa voices too, which was incredible. 
• Also, amazingly, the game doesn’t have big noticeable bugs!

Main problem: 

• It didn’t fit the cozy vibe theme, it was a more wonky funny kind of game. We were struggling to come up with something wholesome and not gruesome. It was more of “Oh a game about Yeti aducting bad children to work as an elf in a gift-making labour factory”, really hard to find an interesting idea that is not weird. Our brain was more in the Halloween mindset at the time.
• The art wasn’t that consistent, me and my friend didn’t manage to make the style of the playable Santa and the cutscene to fit each other. Also, I’m bad at background art. Still got a long way to go.

Personally, I am satisfied with it, it is also not perfect and could use some work by adding more features.

Credits!

Here are the people who worked together on this:

• PorChor (Twitter) - Game Design
• Kaofap - Programming
• Punniz (YT IG X)- Art / Animation
• Soiiwa (Instagram) - Art / Animation
• Rafunzel (Youtube)- Music and SFX

You can check them out on their itch.io page and see other games they worked on. It was really fun! Thanks for reading!