Game Jam Postmortem

This was a personal project that has a one-week time limit for completion and was the first real test for me since I never participated in a game jam or even completed a project for that matter. I had even less time than allotted since I was still completing other assignments at this point and I started with a simple concept given the theme provided. 

The theme was Ludophobia which is the fear of playing games. Given a topic I had never heard of and a limited time frame, I started to build a concept I bounced off of a few friends of mine. I had built the main structure of the house after trying to search for assets with no luck. After successfully building a level that the player could easily move around with very few issues and picking a camera style and playstyle that made sense, next thing was completing the gameplay. 

At this point, I had a friend join me to help complete the rest of the game and make it look good. The original concept was a Truman show-like style of game where the player wouldn't know it's a game until a certain event happens and we just evolved from there, changing concepts ideas and level designs on the fly until we settled on something that would fit our timeframe and design skills. All the blueprinting and technical aspects were very few and far between and the main issues were continuity in the story. 

The main story is as follows: The PC follows the same routine every day, and the further the game continues the pattern stays the same but world around them changes, and the player must find a way to break the cycle or else they will continue down an endless path of repetition. When we were finished, we got two play testers, one each between us to play and give us feedback. We adjusted values from our play testers and submitted ~2 hours before deadline. I was proud, not because we turned it in, but because we were able to start and complete a game from scratch with a new idea based off of a theme in half of the allotted time. 

We received positive and negative feedback with the former being that the concept of the game was interesting and the design was good, and the latter being that the goal and direction was hard to find and understand respectively.  We figured as much from our playtests and didn't expect few players to figure it out but for the majority of struggle with the "ending" of the game was unforeseen. As a result, we understand our problems and misdirection and plan to evolve and overcome them but the fact remaining that we completed the challenge was more than enough for us to consider this project a success. In the future, I plan to take on many more game jams and personal projects with the theme more encapsulated, and the thoughts of the general audience in mind to make a more cohesive game and, in turn, a better experience for the player.