Last night, I attended day one of my first ever game-jam in Cambridge.  The theory was that we had three hours, from seven until ten, to make a game based on one or all of the three supplied themes - two players, one screen; bungee-jumping; Swiss cheese - and some people hit that target, but it was more of a warm-up day while people arrived and got up to speed.

My own offering (available [here]) took a little over the three hours, but I was proud of making something (vaguely) playable in only three hours.

One thing that became apparent is that programmers have an advantage here.  I was faced with the choice between Ren’Py (a visual novel format) and some kind of web-based game.  I actually started planning a narrative game based on the idea of amnesia (“swiss-cheese” applying to the main character’s memory) before deciding on a turn-based siege warfare game written in PHP. 

In the end, I realised just how little dev-time three hours gives you.  I have been used to long dev-cycles and large teams, so working solo in a short time-scale is new and terrifying.  I could spend over three hours writing a pitch document, so making the game from scratch in that time needed a change of approach.

Today, I am looking after my sick wife.  I should make it to day two slightly late, but I am not going to push it.  There are two more days to go after today, so if I have to wait for the morning, so be it.  In fact, all the good seats will probably be gone by the time I get there anyway…