First Game Jam!

The Beginning (DAY 1)

I woke up on May 24th at 5AM, made a cup of coffee and stared at the blue screen to await the theme reveal and get a jump start on brainstorming game ideas.  This was the first game jam I was taking seriously and trying to actually submit a “finished” game.  The theme? “TOWER”.  I was not short on ideas. My original idea (that I thought I’d be creating) was to have a platforming game where you throw your coworkers around in order to climb the corporate tower (or ladder). I had created a character that I thought would be easy to rag doll. After researching for less than 5 minutes, I realized how hard that was going to be in 2d and I REALLY didn’t want to work in 3d. So scrapped that idea and went back to the drawing board. The idea of creating a stacking game or a platformer didn’t sit right with me after I spent more time thinking. I felt like many people were going to use this option and it’s already a hyper saturated genre. So, I decided to do a gathering game. You gather resources to help build your tower taller. (Looking back, I needed to create a reason WHY you were building the tower)

The Art (Day 1)

As I said earlier, I had a character created and ready to go. But I needed a world to put him in. Enter SCRIBBLE LAND!

As you can see I had created a character, trees, bushes, and a house. This all was inspired by line art I had found browsing Pinterest for inspiration. Then I used circles as placeholders for the resources to gather and *boom* a scene. We had an initial sketch, a game loop, and a character. Now it was time to start coding.  The thing that I feared the most heading into this project. The reason was trauma. 

Trauma  

I had previously joined only 1 other game jam and that was Game Off 2025 jam last November.  That jam lasted for a month and was the first time I had ever tried coding, creating a 2d tilemap and building a game from scratch, joining a jam, or even was interested in something like this. I found this concept of creating games and building them in October and started to think ”I could do that.” Well, about halfway through that jam my code basically broke and I lacked the skills to know how to fix it. I had poured time and energy into a 2d tilemap that wasn’t working right.  I was finished with the difficulty of getting enemy AI to work properly. So I scrapped the project and didn’t think twice about going back. 

Coding (Day 2)

I have a full time job and a family, so coding on day 2 didn’t start until late in the evening. I had been thinking up ideas throughout the entire day and was itching to get it in an initial playable state. It was a lofty goal, but one I thought I could achieve given the timeline that was present. So, I wrote a quick character movement script I was happy with and created an enemy that would just move towards player when they got to close.  Now it was time for what I thought was going to be the hard part. Picking up an object and tracking it. Surprisingly people created TONS of videos because people pick up COINS all the time! Game Code Library came in clutch many times throughout this project. Picking up coins, tilemap, and camera boundary / follow player. (https://youtube.com/@gamecodelibrary?si=ffRSC5S4h1WBA-hT)

By the end of day 2 I had enemies that would chase you (Triangles), objects to pick up (circles) and a character that would run around the blue world. 

Art (Day 2)

I kept working on different ideas for the player animations and was looking for inspiration for a resource object to pick up to build a house. Scribble island was coming to a good state.  I had started to create scribble enemies that would  represent the chaotic world trying to overtake the player and his domain. It felt good, but not great. Black and white colors seemed like they would set a good mood, but lacked to POP that I wanted my game to have design wise. (I’m more of an artist than coder) Then when looking back over the rules for the jam and theme, inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks. COCONUTS!  The game jam host is literally COCO Code.  Why wouldn’t I make my resources coconuts, make my towers iterations of coconut houses. Thus Coconut Tower was born. Now time to create the images.  

I got to work on a simple coconut design, gave some color to my character and trees, and drew some house designs quickly. 

Coding (Day 3) 

THE STRUGGLE WAS REAL! I had moved from simple coding to building multiple different overlapping ideas and concepts. Coconuts weighed the player down, slowing his move speed. Dropping off the coconuts removed them from the player and added speed back, upgrading the tower if the player had enough coconuts in the bank. Making sure enemies don’t get stuck on collision objects. It was all overwhelming and I failed multiple times. I don’t know how many times I’d skip something basic or forget to check a box and have everything fail miserably.

Coding (Day 4)

Here is where I stop keeping track of progress and just start throwing myself at solutions. My combination of YouTube videos and google AI helped get me through most problems, but actually using those tools and implementing them into my game and my code felt daunting. Every time I hit the play button in unity I was praying that I didn’t meet the RED ERROR messages on the console. Never failed a few issues would pop up, I’d resolve them and then trudge on.  I had finally managed to get the tower upgrade to function like I wanted as well as the coconut script to slow down the player. Looking back all of these things were simple solutions, but when you’re in the thick of the forest it’s hard to see the way out.

Art (Day 5)

It was time to start putting in all of the sprites and graphics. Each time imported them into unity I would find small issues that I needed to address. I didn’t have a ton of time on day 5 to do anything, so I mainly just suffered with the knowledge of the small mistakes. Most are probably unnoticeable to the casual player.  After getting frustrated with that I finished the sound effects and music for the game. 

Coding (Day 6)

I finished up any small tweaks and adjustments that needed to be made. Set up code for each of the sound effects and soundtracks, then exported the game. I wasn’t going to be able to do much else to add to the game. It was finished and I turned it in.

Overall this experience has been amazing. From concept to design, all with only a couple hours spent each night on the game. I will say that it helps to have an art background and the ability to use google effectively. If it wasn’t for all the amazing people creating content for game development I would have never made it this far. Is the game perfect? Absolutely not! There are so many flaws and bugs. Things that I have already adjusted and added.  One thing is for certain. I am beginning to enjoy making games.