The best part about making a game for a game jam is watching the levels start to unfold and the characters begin to animate and logic starts to work and mechanics are being tweaked. The time and energy that we sacrifice for ... "for what?" you say?. ...

The excitement of seeing a project through. Whether it be gloriously received or crushingly panned, it cannot be overstated that these game jams help you realize where you can learn more and improve to make your delivery of a great gaming experience more robust.  For a lot of us we like to think of a way to make our mark on the gaming industry. Through a game jam you can pullback the layer of the game development industry and  really focus on a common end goal. The constraint of time leads to drastic measures.

I am a full time, fine dining Chef who works at a prestigious country club. I work superhuman hours during the busy season and I am seemingly rarely home. The weekend of the GMTK 2021 game jam ( game jam being 48 hours) I was scheduled for approx. 21 hours of work, that left me with roughly 27 hours to :  travel to and from work is 1.5 hour per day x3 = 4.5 hours, (27 - 4.5 = 22.5), sleep 7 hours (22.5 - 7 = 15.5), 

Roughly 15 hours was left to make art and animations for this game. 

The launch did not go as smooth as expected, wrought with issues we struggled to get it out. I , myself, was carving beef with the "Joneses" as the launch was taking place.  Very nerve wracking, when you put so much effort into something ( as our whole team did) to have it not fit the vision 100%. 

This is the beauty of game jams : You can love the characters and feel a special bond with the game when its over, but there will be another jam and the grief will soon fade with time and be replaced with memories of getting those wonderful parts of the game fit together. 

...and then the next jam.

Thanks for checking it out. 

Jam Crew,

Senior art design

Michael Yount