Zach here (the code simian for our entry)
So this particular jam was probably the smoothest one for us to date. There was a small hiccup as I tried out the new JSON tools for Unity (which fails silently on unsuccessful deserialization), and eventually came to find out it couldn’t deserialize Dictionary objects (it can only deserialize objects already handled by Unity’s own serializer), but only an hour or two was lost. I was also learning something mostly new to me (the entire game used Unity’s new-ish UI system), but that also went over pretty well.

So what was the x-factor?
Sleep.

In all previous jams, we’d push ourselves to the limit, pull all-nighters, really try to squeeze as much productivity from ourselves as possible. I usually take the Monday off from work as well. This time around, we took a much more relaxed approach; we didn’t really even get started until around noon on Saturday. We didn’t stay up super late, ate regular meals, and attended social functions that came up.

As a result, whenever we were actively working on the project, we were fully charged and able to put in our best effort.

So I guess there really is something to be said about getting adequate rest. It’s probably fine to crunch as the deadline approaches, but to do it from the start is pretty much suicide for a project.

We ended up with a game with relatively clean code, few bugs, and actually managed to get in just about every feature we’d originally planned on. We didn’t really get to playtest a lot, but the compulsion loop was fairly sound. Ingredient gather is a bit boring and tedious, but overall, we’re both very proud of what we managed to accomplish.

The mechanics are pretty simple, and I personally approached the game as though it were a sub-portion of a larger game (a crafting system). That may have also contributed to the lack of stress.

So, be sure to check out our entry!