Looking back on GMTK2021

So before I continue expanding on the concept, let's look back at what I learned during the GMTK 2021 game jam.

Development

Day 1 :

Not sure I would join, I tough of a few ideas looking at synonyms for the theme, I ended up with the idea of a dating app where you have to match people together to make money to pay your rent. Then I had a good night sleep.

Day 2 : 

Decided to join the jam and scrapped the idea because I wasn't sure that it would be fun to play and it would be too complex to finish it with my limited gamedev experience.

I hacked a simple prototype of the main mechanic, using Unity2D physics and a bit of custom code to pull objects together, tweaked it until I felt like it was enjoyable to use even without anything else (no levels, no sound, no menus, default unity sprites, ...) Then I created a few levels and a level loader.

Day 3 :

Added more levels, added splash screen, added a slow motion button to make the game easier and allow me to make more difficult levels, added skin button for all levels to allow players to experience all the mechanics.

Tried to remove the default sprites look for the game and decided to go for a scribble look for the game.

Days 4 to 9 :

I tried posting my game in the GMTK dicord, got 0 traction with that, the best I could get was adding "rate and comment my game and I'll rate yours" in the Discord post to have 1 or 2 views.

I tried joining streams but that barely translated to views or ratings and was way too time consuming as most streamers require you to be in the stream to play your game.

I joined the rate exchange on another Discord which yielded most of the ratings I got.

What did I learn?

First thing that comes to mind is music and SFX, I wouldn't even know what software to use for that so the game had no sound and based on the comments it reduced the presentation so that's something I should learn, at least the basics.

Next thing I did well is the fun part of the game, based on the comments and the final score, the game was fun to play, here is what I gathered from the feedback and watching people play:

• Short levels make failure less frustrating because you're not investing much in each run
• The hardest levels made people really happy when they completed them, I believe it is because you can see that each level is doable and you get closer to the goal on each run
• Some levels were crazy hard, I added a slow motion key to make them easier and it was really well received, getting feedback that it is good to have a custom difficulty setting in the game
• Making all the levels skipable was a wise choice because it let people discover all the mechanics and skip to the next level instead of quitting the game after multiple failures
• Colliders for some obstacles were a bit too big for their perceived graphic size, so that's definitely something to watch out for as the player might feel cheated when they die and it looks like they barely touched and obstacle
• Colliders for things to click were sometimes too small or too far apart to be easily clicked, so that's something to watch out for during level design
• Maybe setting the game speed for each level and adding a challenge mode would add some replayability and give an extra challenge to players who want more
• Post jam, I've played with the idea of having a line that shows the player's trajectory to make tight jumps easier to predict and it works well so I'll keep that in mind for any future platformer
• A restart key is mandatory to allow faster restart of the levels if it is easy to die

The next big downside for me was, the presentation. The scribble art style worked really well for some people but I believe some people hated it. It was however really quick to execute (about 4 hours to make everything, including a custom font). The lack of any sound in the game is probably one of the reasons I scored lower in Presentation. Next would be the main menu which was, well, crap...

Getting people to even visit the game page was the biggest challenge post submission, I put 0 effort in the game page so I got zero investment from viewers, makes complete sense. I tried raising the game a bit by adding gifs of some levels but I definitely need to work on the presentation of the game in the list to make people want to click on it. However thanks to the jam, I could get view by a bit of promotion:

• Rate exchange Discord was fantastic to get views, feedback and ratings, I think 90% of the traffic came from them and got an amazing amount of info on the good and bad of the game
• Some people had "DM for rate swap" in their Discord name, I contacted a few, got contacted by a few, definitely a good way to get reviews even if I feel like the feedback was less detailed
• Posting in the "review my game" channel of the jam didn't translate in views unless I added "If you rate it, leave me a comment so I'll rate yours" in which case I'd get 1 or 2 ratings. Given that the channel allowed only 1 post per 6 hours, it wasn't very productive
• Last is streamers, although it was nice to see how people play the game and what elements they struggled with it was the most "expensive" thing to do to get views, most streamers require that you stay in the stream to play your game (which I totally understand) and usually rate the game but other developers in the streams didn't go check the games played which lead to maybe view/rating per 2-3 hours of paying decent attention to a stream