Butterscotch Shenanijam Post Mortem
Introduction:
The Butterscotch Shenanijam is an online Game Jam hosted by the game studio Butterscotch Shenanigans, creators of Crashlands. I set some goals for myself and after short while I roped talked a friend into joining me. We set off to each learn a new piece of software during the Shenanijam, I was picking up Game Maker Studio 2, and he was trying out Krita to produce the games art. The goals that I set for my self were few, but still important:
- Complete game (with sound & menu).
- Use Game Maker Studio 2
- Make sure the game loop is infinite.
Along side the theme there was also achievements, which gave people challenges, as well as strengthen the game jam mentality. These are the achievements that our game unlocked: One Punch Man - Your game is controllable with a single input. Seal Approved - Some aspect of your game is controlled by the sound of claps. Tango - Your team size is 2.
The theme of the game jam was “Sticky Justice” so we interpreted that as “Stick of Justice” and made a game about delivering justice with a baton. There was originally going to be a scene that shows some cops inventing the baton in a world where it didn’t already exist for some reason, but it never got finished.
The Good:
I followed a lot of the “How to Jam” material that was provided by the organizers, a studio that was founded on the same principles as jams, and they really know what they are talking about. The best of what they outlined is that “bias towards action” is something that you can and should take advantage of, regardless of context, in order to become more productive at any given task. Game jams embrace this concept and let people dive head first into the world of game dev.
The Bad:
I keep using game jams as a way to learn new engines or software and it has certainly been a good experience but I need to now focus on becoming more productive in a single engine/software suite so that I can more easily focus on improving implementation, that is to say the design and feel of my games.
Conclusion:
I am very satisfied with this game jam, even though the game itself is lack luster, I am confident that it is a great stepping stone on my path to be a better game developer. It was also fun to jam with a friend! Going forward I need to stick to using a single game engine so that I can actually get good at using it. I will be sticking with Game Maker Studio 2 for all of my personal projects for the foreseeable future. My goals for the next game/jam is to implement some sort of progression/power loop that makes the game more replayable.