I won second at a really important game jam
September 3, 2024
Facepunch hosted another month long game jam and I participated in it again with Small Fish. We won the previous game jam so expectations were high and we were gunning for that top spot again. Unfortunately, we fell short and placed second. Only winning the second place prize of $13,000 USD.
It is extremely easy to identify the reasons why we lost. We ended up over-scoping and not delivering a satisfying game loop with the numerous amount of systems our game features. Here is a brief list of some of the features we have…
- Voxel destruction
- Procedural dungeon generation
- Spelling casting (via cards)
- Intelligent enemy AI
- 100+ armour pieces
- 100+ weapons
- Leveling system
- Stats system
- Buffs system
The list goes on… and we should have cut some of these to refine the core game loop and fix critical bugs we encountered. The major nasty ones to mention are the following…
- Failed dungeon generation
- Memory leak due to NPC path finding
- Multiplayer being completely busted
The technicality and art style of our game surpasses any entry by a long shot. I mean… just look at our game.
These are just a few screenshots but you can check out some more here.
If we had just another week to bring together our beautifully crafted systems and squash those nasty bugs we would have eclipsed any competition. But… we didn’t! and that’s okay.
It is hard not to be content with the results. I’m grateful every day for the Lord’s blessing of good health for myself and those around me. There is so much meaningless violence (and war) out there in the world and to have the ability to dedicate an entire month making a video game is a blessing itself. I’m sure there are plenty of other people who participated in this jam that are crushed by the results… but it’s worthwhile to zoom out and realize how nice you have it. There is also no value at getting upset or disappointed for not coming in first. The best thing is to treat this as a learning experience and work towards improving in the future. Excited for the future and blessed to have been apart of producing this great game.