Introduction

This past week I had decided to participate in the Global Game Jam - 2024. It was a great time and a huge learning experience!

The Idea

Since the jam topic was "Make me laugh", the idea was to create a ridiculous but funny concept. Myself and my three other group members settled on the idea of a Schizophrenic dating sim, which has the player play through a high-trip dating sim with different items usually found in a medical room, hinting that the player may not be where he thinks he is.

Credit - Alexis De melo

The Process

We decided to make our game in the Godot game engine since our game had a heavy focus on dialogue, which Godot has an amazing plugin for called Dialogic. As for the game art, it was primarily done in Clip Studio Paint.

more process work to come!

What Went Right

There were a lot of things that went really well during the development process. First, the team, which was a joy to work around, made the development process a lot of fun.

Our team was genuinely very talented and had a vast number of skills, which made the team a lot more well-rounded!

What Went Wrong

Even with all the positives, we did end up having a few issues. First, we shot too high. We kept on adding and thinking about more features to our game without fully finishing the main functionality first. Secondly, our time management. We left a lot of core functionality to the end. Something like storyboarding the sequence of events, which should have been done in the planning stage, got done on the last day...yikes. Lastly, we didn't take into account that Godot's servers were blocked on the Humber Wi-Fi, so we were never able to build our game in the end to submit it on time.

We were left with a half-finished game, some of the functionality not even visible to the player even though we worked hard on it, and a non-built game.

What Did We Learn

We learned a few things from this project. First and most importantly, time and process development management (organization for short). Secondly, don't shoot for the stars without a rocket ship first, which means it's always great to shoot for the stars and want to add more features to your game. Ideas are great! But first, build your base functionality/game, in this case, the rocket ship if you will. Lastly, and less seriously, don't rely on Humber Wi-Fi.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, the Global Game Jam was a wonderful experience. Not only did I learn a lot from it, but I also really enjoyed it!

Link to the Game

Devlog - What the fox says