I Survived my first Game Jam

Boy, How do I start? I don't even know how to devlog. Alright, here goes nothing...

I've been studying game development for the last 2 years and I never participated in a Game Jam. So I decided to change that, joining the GoedWare Game Jam #4 and also I brought a friend!

Glory to Munkind wasn't the first idea we had for the Jam, at first it was going to be a physics game about a rocket using the orbits of planets to get to its destination. When we realized that our coding abilities in the Unity Engine weren't enough we decided to make something else.

The idea of destructible blocks have been in my mind since a long time, so, I decided to follow a tutorial. It seemed exciting and easy enough for me, so I made my own version of it, tweaking and exploring some ideas resulting in the first prototype of the game.

During the following days, we've been working separatly, I was doing the design and programming aspect of the game, and my friend was making some art assets. After making the character move and all the blocks to work properly, I implemeted the assets and the game was looking great.

The name? It surged from a random conversation I had with another friend. We "invented" this word 'Mun' and it got stuck in the tittle. I imagined an alien soldier trying to save its people from an evil space maze, and because they feel proud of their nation/species and they are able to do anything to save it, it felt appropiate for them to say "Glory to Munkind".

Now, the game was VERY challenging to make. For the most part, this is a first try for everything that has to do with sounds, level selection and unlucking them, sound effects and even particle effects. I said I was studying game development, but I don't have too much experience with Unity. This didn't made this less enjoyable though. I really love learning new things, and I'm sure I will use this knowledge in my projects from now on.

The hardest thing to make but the one I had the most fun with was definetly designing levels. I made 20 in total with the objective of making this game between a 5-15 minute experience. I really enjoyed it, specially testing them and actually make them connect to each other, it felt so satisfying to play from start to end and seeing everything work.

In the end, I made everything I wanted to make. I only wished I used the cinemachine addon for unity for bigger and longer levels, and to actually make a proper boss fight with more music, so overall I really feel good about how this game turned out.

It has been quite the journey, and I will join another Jam in the future.