Together with my wife i made 10 games during game jams, 9 of which were ludum dare (the other one being GMTK2020). This was so much fun and it helped us immensely! I wrote a little blog post that explains my most important, non-obvious learnings that i wanted to share with you.
These are the points, shortened 85% (check out the link to see it in full, with images). Short disclaimer: For the sake of brevity, i omit the "there are always exceptions"-part. There are, of course, and nothing is always A and never B.
Your game is too hard
You'll probably loose all grasp of how the game will feel like for a new player and thus will probably make it too difficult.
ROT (Rule of Thumb): Balance your game so you can just about win. Then half the difficulty.
Teach through play, not text
Very few people will read the explanations for your game given your game page on ldjam.com. Frontloaded ingame explanations will also be most likely skipped or forgotten immediately.
ROT: Ask yourself: Can players understand what to do, if they didn't read anything?
Be picky with who you work with
Involving more people than yourself always introduces an overhead. Sometimes this can mean you spend more time "managing" than you save through their contributions. Of course working with others can be much more fun than working alone, so it's not a pure cost-benefit calculation.
ROT: Give people a chance, don't ignore red flags, be aware of and manage the risk of them not "delivering".
Pragmatism is key
Boils down to:
* Keep it simple: Is this the simplest way to do it, even if it is stupid?
* Choosing the right things to work on: Is this really the most important thing for the game, right now, in this stage of development?
* Consider alternatives: Could you do this completely different and save time and effort? Would it work to omit this thing completely?
Game Jam Preparation
Apart from the usual things, don't forget to setup your (skeleton) project beforehand. Push it into version control already, and make sure everyone on the team has access and understands the VCS. Make sure you can export your project as HTML, so people can play in the browser.
As i write there - what really interests me is this:
* What (non-obvious thing) did you learn during game jams?*
*What do you think other game makers should adhere to or think about, to make great games? *
Where do you disagree with me?
Please let me know! :D
