3to1: Annual Game Jam 2022 - The Big One

For the past two weeks, I have been participating in the 3to1: Annual Game Jam 2022 - The Big One. In this jam, I was the programming lead and designer on a team of 13 people. The theme was Excavate and for this, we created the game Protocol Xeno: Excavate!.

This was probably my most successful game jam to date as the game was quite fun and well balanced, had no game-breaking bugs, the art was complete, and there were no missing features.

I think this was mostly due to the scope of the game, which matched the duration of the jam almost perfectly. The idea was simple and modular, meaning that new fetures could be added easily and playtested quickly. Partway through the jam, we were about to implement several new mechanics because we thought the game needed more complexity; however, we made the decision not to because those mechanics would sap a tone of time and would make balancing the game in the time we had near impossible. Even though we didn't make that mistake for this game, we did in every other game I've worked on, and I think this game exemplifies how less can be so much more.

Another reason for this game's success was the fact that we had implemented nearly all the mechanics by the halfway point of the jam, giving ample time to balance, playtest, and refine the mechanics we had.

There were a few issues during development that could have been prevented. First of all, during the first week of the game jam, there was no art in-game which was quite alarming at the time. This was, in part, due to the artist having personal things to deal with as well as poor communication between the artists and the rest of the team. This could have been solved by using more verbal communication alongside the Trello.

Overall, I'm really happy with how this game turned out and how fun and complete it is.