I recently participated in CGAJam. You can play my game entry here
You can see the entry page here: https://itch.io/jam/cga-jam/rate/148719
What is CGAJam?
CGA Jam is a game jam run by Davit Masia with a couple special rules:
- only use one of the two original CGA color palates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
- 8bit/chiptune sounds
You can see the page for the CGA Jam here: https://itch.io/jam/cga-jam
How did I get into this?
This was my second game jam, I decided to join it because I had so much fun with Ludum Dare (you can read about that here: Ludum Dare Postmortem) The feedback I got on my first jam game was so great that I found the experience to be extremely valuable to further my own abilities in gamedev. Additionally, I thought the palette limitation was really cool, and the limitations generally are easier on me since I am a bit weak creatively.
What went well?
Luckily, this is my third game using PICO-8, so I had a good idea how to use the tool I was going to use to create the game. Additionally, I had an idea quite early on and just went with it. I accomplished a main game loop pretty quickly. I was having a lot of fun working on the visual flair of this game. Since I had accomplished most of the game mechanics and win/lose conditions quite quickly, I was able to focus on some other aspects of game development that I find myself lacking in. In particular, I wanted to work on the visual flair, feel, and aesthetic polish of my games. I had plenty of time to do that, and I am quite satisfied how the game ended up looking.
You can see a comparison of how it started:
Vs how it ended up:
I feel like I was able to make it look quite nice and definitely more polished than my previous games! I'm quite happy how everything turned out and I felt like I was focused and really put forth one of my best efforts to date.
I actually got a really good score! CGA jam had 119 entries, and overall, I got 24th place! Not bad! Incidentally, my strongest category was music, I got 15th place! Awesome :)
You can see my entry page here, with all the great feedback I got from everyone:
https://itch.io/jam/cga-jam/rate/148719
Interestingly, I didn't spend as much time on the music as I had with the visual FX of the game, but music was my strongest category. This inspired me to spend more time on the music, and as a celebration I picked up one of these at the local music store: https://www.teenageengineering.com/products/po (more on that in a future post)
What didn't go well?
Honestly, I just don't know what it takes to make a fun game. The mechanics of CGARace aren't really that fun, and I'm usually stuck when it comes to coming up with new and fun game mechanics. There's a decided lack of creativity and skill when coming up with new and fun ideas. The ideas that do pop up into my head generally are simple and uninteresting, and the fun wears off before the game is even over. I need to work on that! I'm not quite sure where to start, though.
Conclusion!
I had a great time, I think I progressed immensely - especially in the visual effects department. Game design is something that I need to work on, and I am inspired to create fun and interesting music for future games.
To summarize:
went WELL:
- awesome feedback from the community
- visual effects are fun!
- game music was recieved very well
- pretty good rank!
didn't go well:
- game wasn't fun, it's hard to come up with fun ideas and mechanics