This devlog is really an appreciation letter to the itch.io and independent game dev community for being such an awesome corner of the internet – there’s tons of encouragement, thoughtful feedback, and demonstrations of creativity and courage all around–whether you’re the dev or the player. 

After reading and watching several game dev videos, and the GMTK game jam winners video, the vibe from everything I watched and read inspired me to try my hand, too. The resounding piece of advice for beginners was that game jams were great opportunities to learn. And although I didn’t have high expectations (my objective was purely to participate), I ended up having so much more fun than I anticipated.

So here it is, 10 things I learned from my first game jam:

1. Write everything down, and then prioritize. I spent day 1 ideating and planning, and got started on development on day 2. Adam Savage says: “What a deadline does for me is it lops branches off my decision tree.” A lot of branches were lopped off since I only had 6 days–and it was a work-week. A lot.
2. Scour the internet for your problem, and there you’ll find dozens (if not thousands) of answers for just that. This is more true as I’m still a beginner, but I’ve always been a proponent of believing that I’m not the only one with these problems. My first thought when I’m stuck tackling something is: “How are others doing this?” I’m a learning designer by trade and I just wanna say – mad props to the people who create tutorials, ask & answer questions on subreddits, post on forums, etc. It takes a lot of bravery to ask for help, and just as much courage to give time and attention to extending a hand for help. That, too, inspires me to share what I learn. I’ll leave a list of as many of the resources I used below.
3. People are really generous. I’m honestly not so sure my game is any fun, but everyone’s been really great with how they provided feedback–I always walk away feeling like I want to make it better next time. 
4. Playtest your game. I’m sure you’ll hear this a lot in other devlogs or developer advice posts/vlogs, but I just want to call out that I really really appreciate the people who playtest a game and give really great feedback–both for areas to improve and areas to continue doing more of. I used to be in QA at a major game company and testers are truly under appreciated. Thank you to everyone who has playtested a game for a developer and gave a lot of thought behind their feedback!
5. Everything takes longer than initially planned. I’ve done a myriad of jobs in my life that lend itself to the different aspects of game development – programming (though not game specific, mostly scripts), illustration & animation (I was an illustration & video editor/motion designer for a hot minute), musician (I played the piano for longer than I can remember), etc. so I have a pretty good idea of how long things will take me… and they still take longer than I anticipate, especially when doing something new. Hear that? Another branch from my decision tree lopped off!
6. Version control. I learned early on to save often and version often–typically after I get a minor and major milestone/task completed. This will save you LOADS of time–especially when something was working an hour ago and is now giving you issues.
7. Make it easy. There’s always a “better” way to do something, e.g. more elegant code, more scalable design, etc. but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to work. Make it work. Perseverance, not persistence.
8. Finished, not perfect. Related to the previous point, but that’s just how important it is. Checkout Jake Parker’s video of the same name.
9. Keep it fun. There’s no point if you’re not having fun. Yeah, sure, there are challenging and difficult pieces about making a game, but if you’re hating a particular piece of it, or hating it the entire way, then re-evaluate why you’re making the game to begin with. I had so much fun making my first game that I literally lost sleep–like a kid too excited about Disneyland the night before.
10. Look forward. This is mostly about not beating ourselves up for not getting things quite as we want them. There’s always next time.

All in all, thanks to everyone here for being an awesome bunch of creators, collaborators, and players. The submissions to the Brackeys Game Jam so far have been stellar! Y’all are so cool, and I hope to be even a fraction as cool as you, and a part of this community some day, too.

Thanks for reading!

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Some videos I referenced during this process – huge thanks to everyone who spent the time and effort to make resources available for us n00bs.

• How to make a Video Game - Godot Beginner Tutorial
• Godot 4 Main Menu Beginner Tutorial
• 4-Directional Movement In Godot 4
• Cute and Simple Dialog Box | Let's Godot
• How to Create a COMBAT SYSTEM in Godot 4 (step by step)
• Advanced UI Techniques in Godot: Transitions and Effects
• 2D Godot 4.1 Rpg - 3 - Sword & state machine