GGJ2024 - Postmortem

Hello everyone! Unfortunately I got sick right after the Jam but I’m getting better! I don’t usually get sick so I didn’t even react when I felt that I was getting sick, I just thought that I would recover magically, turns out magic is not real. Anyway, 

 This year's jam was a really satisfactory experience for me. I always felt that our jam games lacked the gameplay aspect and it always bothered me. Even though games like Mending of Lucy’s heart and Voice of Grimshear compensate for that with a good story, I always wanted to challenge ourselves with creating a decent gameplay. So we decided to start the jam by creating a small design document to prevent any confusion further in the development stage and we tried to keep it simple. Designing the game while coding it just never works, it’s too much weight on my shoulders and this causes all kinds of bugs since I constantly need to go back and forth, modifying mechanics. This is how spaghetti code is made. Deciding the mechanics beforehand was a huge weight off of my mind. Here is the whole design document we’ve created.

 Since the theme was “Make me laugh”, I suggested to Shyseel that we should make a game about a secretary that’s been sent by the rival company to bankrupt a company. Her objective was to make everybody laugh so much that the efficiency in the workplace drops. If it was just about this jam, I would suggest something else but I had ulterior motives for this concept. Anyway, as usual, Shyseel agreed without any objections. We decided that there would be 4 minigames, but initially we couldn’t decide on what would be the 4th minigame. Shyseel eventually came up with a great idea, it was a simple minigame, easy for me to implement, but I think it’s fun. So we added ‘Hiring’ minigame as the last minigame. We finished right after presentations started(as usual), except for me forgetting to stop the music when the game ended, everything was fine! No bugs, no crashes! Presentation went smoothly, the Jam finished, we said goodbye to all the nice people we’ve met and left.

 Overall it was a pleasant experience and I’m really satisfied with both our process and the results! I was pretty relaxed through the jam, except for the last 1-2 hours. Unfortunately the jam site was too cold, but everything else was great. As for my ‘ulterior motives’ about the game, for a while I wanted to make an hentai management game that takes place in an office with a secretary protagonist. It’s too early to share any information, but I started working on the documentation already.

Hey there, It’s Shy here. I’ve been craving my workplace setup like crazy since we’ve left. I just wanna get some good drawing done. Sadly there isn't a proper desk I can settle and draw comfortably for the time being, but we’re working on that. Psy ordered two heaters so we can settle in the arctic room with the big desk.

For me the jam was very uncomfortable. Mostly because it was freezing and super uncomfortable to sleep. I feel somewhat drained and I didn't exactly have the energy to get through this jam. Luckily we have a solid workflow with Psy and I'm pretty much used to how things work by now. It's probably my 8th jam or so. I decided I want to join more jams this year.

Take care!