Post-mortem with GGJ-2019: how to get bumps, but still make the game

GGJ-2019 is a global game jam held annually on the last weekend of January. It differs from others in its broad support (sponsors, all affairs), a large number of participants, as well as the fact that it takes place exclusively offline. Further, all the experience I gained at the event will be described in relation to the SUSU site (Chelyabinsk). The conclusions presented in the article do not claim universality, but I hope you find them useful.
Spoiler alert: the article has a list of finalist games from the event, some of them are quite playable.

Team building

Since I was late (all due to traffic jams on the interurban highway), it so happened that by my arrival the teams had already formed. The first conclusion:Do not be late for the formation of teams. The question asked in the event chat revealed that no one needs a JS / PHP / Python programmer in the team. I hardly found a large lecture audience indicated in the program of the event, only to find that the audience was tightly closed. I found out the numbers of the audiences through the chat, where the participants went, and realized that there was a significant problem: even the “good” guardians could not explain how to find them. Getting lost somewhere in the middle of the way, wandered aimlessly somewhere in one of the SUSU buildings, thinking about everything perishable when one of the teachers saw me, and asked if he could help me with something. I am grateful to this man that he was able to guide me to the right place. By the way, he was pleasantly surprised that even nonresident people came to the event at SUSU. Later, walking around the audiences (the two that were located on the first floor, go to the eighth floor, probably in another building, I did not dare to fear being lost again), found out that most teams are going to use Unity, two Unreal Engine teams, another team chose Construct. From here i didthe second conclusion is that it’s worth going to a gamer as a programmer if you spend your time getting to know Unity in advance.

I had a backup plan: if I do not find a team, I will work independently. Moreover, I have one game that I have long dreamed of significantly expanding into a neighboring genre, and here I had a great chance, fortunately, the theme of the event, “what does home mean for you”, perfectly allowed it. Third conclusion: having a backup plan is sometimes useful.

Diversifiers

Having figured out my chances of making a nice and / or interesting game, it was decided to use diversifiers to compensate for the lack of graphic design and game design, which, unfortunately, my games could never really boast of.
What are these diversifiers?

Diversifiers * is a great way to add some fun or challenge yourself to jam weekends. Sometimes they can be very useful in narrowing down or refining your ideas. These are absolutely optional restrictions that you can add to your game for GGJ19 along with the main theme of the theme. This can help your game stand out from the crowd, and you can choose up to 4 diversifiers when you send the game!

From this description it is clear that this is like achievements, not just for players, but for game developers. Here is the list of diversifiers that I have chosen:

Ephemeral - Make a game that every player can play only once.
Super Secret Stash - Add a hidden room to your game.
On a web page - Your gameplay is hidden in a seemingly normal web page.
Increase with a song - Your game should last exactly as long as the music track.

About the game

or how to do it — or how not to do it, given that I didn’t take the place)

It’s said, done, and now I’ve already started to do my project in my traditional stack: HTML5.Canvas, vanilla Javascript. At first the landscape was drawn, then objects, then the fog of war. If the first two are pre-filled two-dimensional arrays (alas, this did not turn out to be a bagel), then the fog of war, although it is an array, is calculated every time (it is logical), based on the updated position of the protagonist. All this was done on the first day, except for the fog of war - he appeared on the first working night.

About time management, phishing

On the morning of the second day, I took paper and wrote a schedule:

9-11 working with graphics and dialogs
11-12 working with music
12-13 working with endgame.

This allowed the work to be completed almost on time. Another conclusion : make a schedule on the second day and follow it, record the time spent and refuse unnecessary details if you do not have time. My main mistake was, it seems to me, that I put the Ephemerality on the diversifier, which brought more headache — to both me and the players — rather than good. It would be better if I made a bad card generator in the same hours that I spent on it. I also implemented "Super Secret Stash" and "Increase with Song" on the second day.

About refereeing

The categories of awards, as it turned out, have nothing to do with diversifiers, although it was noticeable that some teams tried to fit them more or less organically into their games. However, it was another experience that cost me dearly. Despite the fact that the veteran of this event Nikita Popov (he participated in the event for the fourth time!) Informed me about this in the middle of the first day, I did not manage to rebuild myself and did not have time to rebuild my strategy. By the way, on the second day he himself completely abandoned the idea that he had done on the first day, and brought a scattering of electronics, on which he began to dabble in his portable console with one two-part game.

I will briefly describe who won the prizes in the nominations with what.
Best implementation:


The best game according to SKB Kontur - “9 Lives”


Best game according to Napoleon IT


Best ICVR Game


Best game according to Caravan Games


Best Artist by ICVR


The best game in the opinion of TapClap 1 degree and the best prize for the idea


Best Game According to TapClap 2 Degree


Best Game According to TapClap 2 Degree


Finally, the best game according to the host of the event, SUSU - “Tycoon Entry”

An interesting observation: during the awards, the judges did not hesitate to name their weaknesses and preferences aloud. Among these were: space-themed games (a la Asteroids), excel games (a game about a flower made by a team of university employees where it was necessary to water it, shelter from the cold, and so on) was nominated, games with better graphics, and so on ... The next year they promised a reward for the best code or something like that. After the ceremony, just in case, I asked if the guys who screwed Machine Learning to the game about racquet shots at GGJ-2019 could count on taking a prize in this nomination. The answer was disappointing: despite the hype theme, Machine Learning is not their assistant here. So those who, during the announcement of the results of refereeing, worked in a notebook,

Hence the final conclusion: here no diversifiers will help a weak game in refereeing, but knowledge of the "weak" places of the jury can play a positive role.

I hope my experience was recorded for a reason. Well, I hope that you, too, will climb into Tycoon's Entry, as happened to me and dozens of other guys at the event.

Have a nice Friday!