The Chicken Game

This is my first postmortem, and this is the first time I’ve participated in a game jam, so it’s been an experience. Before it started, I was aware of how hard and stressful game jams could be, but I still thought, I’m going to be smart about it, I’m going to plan a simple design, I’m going to code efficiently, and I’m going to get it done. I was wrong. My design was simple enough, and I did get it done, but I did not code efficiently at all. I spent two hours the next night just trying to make a smooth room transition! And while that did eventually work and looked good, it would have been much smarter to spend that two hours nailing down solid mechanics and gameplay. By the time the deadline rolled around I was a little angry and pretty frustrated. Some of the features in the game weren’t working completely and I had to scrap a few mechanics altogether. But the main thing I was annoyed by was that I didn’t have time to add in music or properly adjust the levels of the sound effects. This meant that some of the sound effects were way too loud compared to the narration, which was the main complaint I’ve seen in my feedback. Also I love music and I’m always paying attention to the music in games I play, so I’m sad I didn’t get to add a soundtrack. About a minute before the deadline something still wasn’t working properly, and I hadn’t tested it much, so I seriously considered not submitting my game because I didn’t want to read embarrassingly bad feedback. But my sister and mom had supported me amazingly through the jam, and I had spent the last two days not interacting properly with my family so I could do the jam (I’m a college kid and I was home for the winter break). I couldn’t let them down. So I submitted it, I showed the game to my family and a friend and they thought it was unique and hilarious, and the feedback I’ve gotten so far on this site is much more positive than I expected, so in the end I’m really glad I did it. Special thanks to the community and moderators!