Last weekend I participated in a game jam. It was the first game jam where I was only a participant and not a teacher. The Jam had a theme and a limitation. The theme was “Doodle” and the limitation was the game had to take place in 1 room.
I had 72 hours starting Thursday night at 9pm, going until Sunday night at 9pm. I had to work Friday so I was already a good 8 hours behind.
Thursday night I wrote down an idea for an asteroids like game where you navigated a space ship from point a to point b and shot asteroids.
Friday night I started making the game and thought of a fun idea to add, then another fun idea, then another. Soon I had a list of need to, and want to. Over the next 48 Hours I tried to get the need to done and succeeded but alas… it still had bugs and it wasn’t even close to what I actually wanted.
It had a menu, a score, a death screen, and a high score saving system. It also does not crash (as far as I know). So the game was ‘done’ and I had 30 minutes to submit it before the deadline.
Sweating while attempting to produce a working HTML5 export I just barely made the submission in time with only 10 minutes to go. I felt a rush of comedic joy, part of me was actually proud I finished a project and had something to show for it and the other part of me was embarrassed at how awful it was.
That embarrassment though was turned into comedy and that comedy turned into a happy memory. Had a lot of fun doing the Game Jam and will forever give myself a pat on the back for finally doing one.
If you would like to play the game submission go to: