Making a game in 4 days
The GMTK Game Jam 2024 behind the scene
This was my first jam ever, ending 50th on 7,582 entries, it was an intense 4 days trying to make an experience fitting the theme "Built to Scale". Organized by Mark Brown from the famous Youtube channel Game Maker's Toolkit.
🧠 Finding the idea
I started a brainstorm with a friend that ended quickly into the idea of time manipulation. The focus was on time relativity. Make the player lives on different time scales, so they would witness what it's like to be in a bubble where time is slow down for outsiders, but when you enter it, you switch to the local time scale, so time inside pass normally while time outside is accelerated. Brain twisting.
Day 1 prototype
🧨 Idea to fun
Concept was pretty cool but I needed to create some gameplay with it. I thought about a gun that would create those bubbles anywhere the player wants. Effectively slowing down or speeding up locally anything.
I also added a global timer, to add a speedrun receipe, however now I think it was a mistake. It's applying pressure on the player instead of letting them wrap their head around the "not easy to understand" concept.
Everyday, I would playtest the game to get feedback and iterate. It made the game better way quicker.
🍰 Making content
For the content I did a single map with an objective presented at the beginning - a big door closing - and a linear path with a following of puzzle and platform. Pretty straightforward. You would get the time gun only after a few puzzle to first familiarize a bit with the concept. After a last intense puzzle, you arrive to a time reverse sphere that would open back the door.
Assets were made modular, I made about 10 simple models, no textures, only flat colors, and reused them everywhere. It was paramount for velocity.
🎁 Wrap and release
Last day, I added some final polish, added sound effects and ambiant music and was ready to ship. There was some missing feature that would be nice like checkpoints or seeing door and pressure plate timers. But it was over, I released it (Windows only).
Apo
I also did a small update post-jam to add checkpoints and do small fixes.
🧐 Post-jam thoughts
I learned that, game jam games are very different from normal games.
- To win, you have to be playable on the browser, 99% of the player won't download a game.
- You have to catch player attention and make them understand the gameplay in litterally the first 10 seconds, otherwise they will Tinder swipe you.
- 2D is by nature more fitted than 3D for jams. There is no benefits to be in 3D unless the concept apply only in 3D.
- People that leaves comments are overly nice because it lets a backlink to their own entry so you can try their game - same as irl you could say and I agree - but it means there are very few constructive feedbacks which does not help building better games.
I did not care about winning, I participated for fun, but I wanted to share that because it struck me. I'm less inclined to look out for a game just because they won a game jam, because rules are so specific.
Anyway, it was a fun experience and I'm glad to have done it !
🎮 What now ?
Thanks for reading this far, I actually developed the idea to make a commercial game called Trigger of Time, it's very different from the jam entry but the core idea is still there. Check out:
Apo