Not only is LD50 my first game jam, but this is the 😱 first game I've ever made, Journey in Spacetime: A Text Adventure.

Got home from work late last Friday and didn't even look at the theme 'til Saturday. Took some time to mull over an idea. A thought hit me:

What if you had a flashback to something that never happened?

My noob self wasn't about to make a game complete with cutscenes, so I thought about how to adapt that idea to a text adventure I could make in Twine. I moved through drafting a flowchart, linking and coding the passages, writing some exposition, and basic formatting of the text. I moved on to music, searching up some open source stuff, and at that point was almost out of time. Threw in a few stylized open source images and finished the game Sunday night before bed, but updated the jam/itch pages on Monday after work.

This was such an interesting experience. I learned a new markup language, Harlowe. Also used some variables, conditional logic, and a little HTML. I didn't venture to any outside forums/chats, but everything I saw on the LD site, as well as multiple Twitch streams was friendly, supportive, and encouraging 😊. Thank you to everyone who has played so far and given feedback in the comments and/or on stream! With more time, I'd have liked to include some ambient sound/music on every page. And I think the biggest flaw based on feedback so far was not getting the premise across well enough. I hope anyone else who checks it out has fun and I hope I've set an example for finishing and submitting a game to my middle and high school students participating in the Games for Change Student Challenge. 💜