A Game Jam Diary (Part 1)

A Game Jam Diary (part 1)
A Game Jam Diary (part 2)
A Game Jam Diary (part 3)

Hello everyone! David’s speaking.

I’m with Mathieu at our first game jam as a team. I’m here to talk a little bit about the first part of our experience so far.

What’s a game jam?

A game jam is a video game creation competition. Teams compete against each other to create the best game possible in a limited time. The best game wins! This game jam (the Pixel Challenge, held in Quebec City) lasts 46 hours, from Tuesday 6PM to Saturday 4PM.

Our strategy

Since we’re a team of two and we compete against bigger teams (5 members max), we know we need to be very efficient. We decided to use the Pomodoro timer to help us to stay focus. We both start a 25 minutes sprint, headphones on, and do as much work as we can. After the 25 minutes, et start a 5 minutes break. We chat, relax, etc. Then we repeat. After a few rounds, we take a longer break (maybe a walk).

How it’s been so far

We’re currently Friday at 8:40AM. We left at 1:30AM to come back a few minutes ago. We went home to have the best sleep we can. We’re lucky because we both live 20 minutes from the event, at a walking distance.

There’s also a small screen shot of the game so far. I don’t have time for a video right now unfortunately.

In the next update, I might tell a bit more about the game :) Until then, feel free to join the twitch channel where you’ll have the pleasure of seeing me making horrible programming mistakes. I’m also available for chat on twitch.