Trials

When the game jam started and the theme was released I was a little surprised. Honestly I did not remember seeing this one. Next game jam I will pay more attention to the top 10 and make sure I have some idea of what I want to do depending on what theme gets picked. With all that being said, we were able to design our game in the first 30 minutes of the jam.

• I coded for 15 hours... slept for five hours
• I coded for 19 hours... slept for four and half hours
• I coded for 4 and a half hours and submitted the game with exactly 12 minutes left in the jam

• We designed the game very quickly and had a lot of fun watching the game come to life based on our design
• The animation and music is what went right!!!! Holy cow that scarf and end cutscene is absolutely incredible!
• The final "Trial" where there is lightening and rain and you can't see the blocks until the lighting strikes. I was very proud of that!!!!

• I coded the game to use a controller!!! No kidding with under an hour left I felt that was a mistake (because what if someone does not have a controller) so I changed the code to use both controller and keyboard. Only this broke the game. So I had to take out the controller and with just 12 minutes left I had to hit submit. The jump key was completely broken and it was like I was punched in the stomach!
• I did not know enough about good game mechanics and spent the first 10 hours writing and rewriting code to get it to "feel right". If I came into the jam already knowing how to make it right then that would have saved a ton of time.

Fantastic experience! I can't wait until July 20th so I can do this all over again. I am currently teaching myself all the areas I found to be weak in (there are lots of them). I also want to get a twitter account set up as well as a YouTube channel just to document my experience as I try to just be a better coder making fun games!