In this short post I would like to look back to the development of LAST LIFE STANDING. I want to share with you what I think what went well during the development of my game and what learnings and improvements I will take over to the next game jam.

Brainstorming Phase

I think the brainstorming of the game idea went pretty well. I came up with a lot of keywords. For one, I already had a rough idea in mind but for others I thought "How should put this into a game?". I took the time to think about every topic and came to the point where I found a better fitting idea. That was the point where I had killed my first idea and decided to create LAST LIFE STANDING.

What I want to say with this is, that it is not bad to rethink your own ideas even the first one seems to be the right one. If you later in the brainstorming have an idea where you have more fun with, go with it. Game Jams are supposed to be fun.

Planing Phase

Now some of you might ask: "What?! Planing during a game jam?". Yes, planing during a game jam! In previous game jams, the planing phase was helping me a lot to get an overview from my project's scope. This game jam I went with a rough task plan. The advantage of that was that I did not lose too much time to define what I will need and put more work into the actual game. But in my opinion, that was the reason why I needed much longer for everything. I did not put too many thoughts into the planing which causes that I forgot important mechanics which were added close to the end of the jam.

My advice for the next game jam for myself and other jammers would be: Think about your project's scope very carefully since you have not so much time. Especially if you  participate as a lone wolf.

Production Phase

Actually, the production phase went very well. Sure, sometimes there were bugs which makes you nervous because you try to fix this bug since an hour but in my opinion this is one of the intense parts of game jams. I was trying out a lot of awesome unity features during the production phase. The best thing I figured out was the lightweight render pipeline for 2D lighting. I was blown away by how great a scene can look like just with simple lighting. Since I am a noob at lighting scenes, I am obviously do not talk about the lighting in my game.

Submission Phase

When ONLY ONE hour was left for submitting the game I started to create the itch.io page. For my taste it was a bit to late, because there was a bit of pressure while I was creating assets for the itch.io page. And with pressure the comes mistakes, right? So the next time, I will think of planing a bit more time for creating a good-looking itch.io page.

My Learnings

• Take a bit more time to think about the actual scope for the project and cut it down when it is to big
• Plan some buffer time for fixing bugs and creating the presentation for the game

I hope you got a better inside of my development process and maybe you can take something out from it. This year was my first GMTK Game Jam and it was a lot of fun. I will definitely participate in next years Game Jam, and I am already excited for it.

Greeting!