How to Win a Game Jam

I've been collaborating with Gearless June for several months now and we've decided to focus on game jams. This was our first game jam and we wanted to make a strong showing. Not everything came out perfect, but for 3 days I'd say we did well. How'd we do it?

Short answer is commitment. We spent at least 8 hours a day each working on the game. We stayed in voice chat, allowing us to quickly bounce ideas off each other and clear up any points of confusion. This is in addition to working and thinking about the project separately. Working smarter is great, but it also helps to just work more!

Not everything went according to plan, however. We wanted the wrecking ball to be able to swing up into the air, allowing you to build up enough momentum to blow a car up in one swing. The math wasn't immediately obvious, so we put that on the back burner.  Eventually we just made the swing area so small it wasn't an issue. We also wanted cars to have guns, and for the drivers to abandon cars when they get stuck. We didn't get to that, but for the time we had I'd say we made enough features. Pity, we even had animations for all the guns!

In the future we'll also be streaming our progress on Twitch. This is a good fit considering we keep a consistent schedule anyways. We've already started streaming our progress on the Thankmas game jam, but to be honest we don't know what we are doing! Its mostly just me making pixel art and testing the game, but the first few minutes of each jam is the ideation session where you can listen to us brainstorm game ideas. If you always wondered how someone can make a game in less than a week, or if you're jamming with us and you want an eye on the competition, check out our channel. We stream from around 10pm GMT basically every day.

So... how do you win a game jam?
Its all a matter of time.