I think I started writing this expecting it to be more directly related to Frogbert instead of generally about the jam, but here's a little piece I wrote about my experience participating in a game jam for the first time.

My main take away? You have enough time that you don't need to crunch, or always be rushing. As a counterpoint: that doesn't mean you have time to add all the little touches you want. You need to be pretty ruthless about getting things done quickly and dropping things that aren't working.

It's hard to believe our first attempt at a Ludum Dare with our silly little frog game has been getting so much love. I'm really looking forward to making a post-jam version, and in doing way more game jams going forward.

There's only a short time left, so don't forget to play and rate those last few games you've been meaning to get to!

cough, cough also play Frogbert

Took longer than I expected, but dang if this singing mechanic didn't turn out nicely.

We were still making changes and fixes right down to the wire, but 'Life is Hard, and Then You Buy a Cactus' is live!

It felt much more ambitious than my previous (and first!) Ludum Dare, and I think we absolutely knocked it out of the park. Have fun playing and rating games over the next month, I'm looking forward to seeing what all you've come up with!

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/life-is-hard-and-then-you-buy-a-cactus

It took way to long to get even this figured out, but now I can start working on our actual game mechanics.

The gameplay loop's in now, even if we ran into some... Strangeness:

Now we start juicing the heck out of this thing:

Having done a couple Jams now as a composer+developer, I'm taking a crack at the compo this time around. Unfortunately, that means I'm going to have to make art and design levels.

Got my mockup+game concept done last night, so now it's full steam ahead making basic sprites and actually building a game.

There's a ton of polishing I'm going to have to do (to actually make it obvious how the game relates to the theme, for one), and at least a few more puzzle elements I should come up with, but hey! This is almost a gameplay loop.

Turns out, making art as a non-artist takes a while. I give you, one of the least original puzzle mechanics possible:

I've still gotta figure out a start+end screen, but I think my game about conversation is just about done otherwise!

I wish I could've come up with some more (and more interesting) interactions/puzzles, but hey: my first Compo.

I wish I could have gotten some more content in, but somehow I managed to build a whole game by myself? Incredible: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/associated-arguments

It turns out, doing art is tough, and I have somehow even more respect for artists than I did before the weekend started.