When You Can't Jam
A perennial problem I have is finding collaborators. I have often made the mistake of approaching a friend and pitching them a grand adventure. "Come with me," I'd say, "find your true destiny… IN GAME DEV!"
Obviously, this does not work on anyone ever. This is a lesson that took me longer to learn than it should have.
So the other day when my local game dev group posted that they were going to host a game jam, I was really interested. I have never done a game jam before and thought it looked really fun, but I didn't want to do it alone. I pitched a few of my friends and one of them said that they were interested, but that the schedule didn't match up with when they were available.
At first I was discouraged. I'm a bit of an anxious person, like most basement dwellers, so I hated the idea of showing up for the jam and just hunting around for a team like some kind of goblin. But then I realized, I didn't need to hunt for a team–my friend WANTED to do it. We just couldn't do it on the days that the hosted event was happening.
The solution we came up with was that we agreed to follow the exact rules that the real jam had, but we'd just do it on a weekend when we were both available, so that's exactly what we did. We kept the jam to 48 hours. We made our own stuff, no asset flips. We sat on a Discord call together for 8 hours straight.
In the end we managed to create a silly little platformer where the main feature was that we got tile-based collision and hitboxes working, which in a world of rigid bodies feels like an accomplishment.
Benefits
This was honestly my first game jam experience. Up until that point I had just been developing my skills and techniques solo. It was so revealing just how much extra momentum you got from having another person who was doing part of the lift, providing expectations, and feeding stuff that you needed to unblock.
I felt like I was always racing against his output in the best possible way. If I didn't get this animation integrated before he had the next one ready, I'd be behind. I couldn't let his artwork go to waste and not get it into the game, that would be so disappointing. The stress was real, but it didn't feel like a grind, it felt like motivation.
For all of you who have done game jams before, I'm sure none of this is surprising. If you're like me and think that game dev is an ascetic path for solo levelers, I think you'd be surprised to find just how much you can accelerate in a short amount of time. Deep, motivated focus on something with a small specific scope leads to meaningful outcomes!
After the game jam was over, I had so created so many useful systems and plugins that I was able to refactor out into reusable components. These became the basis of my current Robin Hood action platformer game. There were some major blockers that I needed to conquer and the game jam gave me the push to just make them happen.
And for that reason I highly suggest doing a DIY game jam. Nothing is stopping you. Find your best chum, ask them if they're free for a day or two, clarify that you're not asking for a lifetime of toil and asceticism, and enjoy getting something jammed out :)