April was a month of game jams! I joined my first one at the tail end of March on a whim. Like half the world, I felt drained from job hunting and burnt out. I needed a break. Desperately. I knew that I wanted to explore more indie game development after producing a short Twine interactive fiction game for a data science fellowship last year. I enjoyed how creative I felt because a lot of my tech and data work is very practical! It also helped that my friend kept texting me, “Do it.”
In my first game jam, I made “The Creatures From Below,” a short Visual Novel from the monster’s perspective of greeting underwater divers (new friends!). I want to return to the game sometime this year and build off of the story - maybe make this my first Steam game or a paid itchio game. Not only did I get good feedback, I had so much fun designing the sprite sheets and thinking of the story.
I actually joined my first game jam late - the final game was due in 2 days so I went solo and found free assets in the store. Writing fiction comes easy to me! I whipped up the plot and struggled to figured out how to best make this a good visual novel. In the final version - the SFX and music made the game scary.
I pushed myself for the other jams to make a team game! I competed in two jams at once in mid-April: the Cozy Spring Jam and Beginner’s Game Jam. Both were low stakes and I had a large group of 5 or more people. I has a lot of fun doing the art for the Beginner’s Jam. I bought a new sketchbook and had fun drawing! Here are some concept sketches that transformed into the fuller game:
Now I’m entering my 4th game jam of the month to make a Josei horror visual novel. I’ve recruited 17 - yes, 17 people to make this game with me, including voice acting!!!
Until next time…
You can play all the games I made so far for free on itchio at https://decolfutures.itch.io/