Entering GDevelop BIG Game Jam #10 with five days to go

0

22

GDevelop BIG Game Jam #10 with five days to go

Five days is enough time to make an interesting browser game if you can name the last thing the player will do. Deliver the parcel. Escape the room. Keep one machine running until the bell. A finish line like that makes it much easier to decide which parts of your idea can fit into GDevelop BIG Game Jam #10.

GDevelop and HelperWesley are hosting the nine-day event from November 6 to 15. If you’re joining on Tuesday the 10th, start with the theme on the official jam page and check the closing time displayed for your location. The organisers require GDevelop, a game that anyone can play in a browser for free, and publication on both itch.io and gd.games. Teams can have up to four people.

Give the theme one job

Here’s a prototype you can bend around the announced theme. Put a courier, a parcel and a delivery hatch on one screen. Picking up the parcel changes one rule. Perhaps the courier can cross the blue tiles empty-handed but has to choose a longer path on the return journey. The whole puzzle fits in a picture, and the player can tell whether they have succeeded by looking at the hatch.

Replace that tile rule with something the theme suggests to you. Write down the action that will make the connection clear to a person playing without your explanation. If the connection only exists in the title, spend ten minutes changing the rule before spending an afternoon drawing the title screen.

Already working on something for Game Off? The GDevelop rules allow pre-existing events and extensions, but the entry itself has to be developed during this jam.

For a first GDevelop project, three events are a manageable start. Touching the parcel sets a carrying variable and hides the parcel. Trying to enter a restricted tile checks that variable. Reaching the hatch while carrying the parcel ends the level. The thirteen-chapter Geometry Monster project we covered earlier is another way into the editor’s event system.

Get one build onto both sites

A playable grey-box version is enough for the first upload. In GDevelop, open Share, choose gd.games and publish the game. Open its link on another device. The publishing screen can give you a QR code, which makes a phone test easy to fit into a short session. The organisers also suggest the genre Game Jam 10 so entries appear together on gd.games.

For itch.io, export the web build, zip its files with index.html at the top level, and mark the upload as playable in the browser. Open the actual itch page and play through to the delivery hatch. Then enter that project on the jam page. Give yourself time to check that the entry appears in the event as well as on your own profile.

That first trip through both builds is where a missing image or an off-screen button becomes cheap to fix. Keep the two project links together while you work. When somebody reports a problem, ask which link they used and which device they were holding.

Spend the remaining days on the second room

Use one evening to watch a friend play the opening room in silence. If they walk to the hatch without the parcel, make the empty delivery slot visible. If they pick it up and forget where they came from, change its colour or silhouette while it’s being carried. Either fix will teach your rule again in every later level.

Add a second room only once the first one reads well. Switch the starting position or move the hatch across the restricted tiles. You get a new decision out of the events you already understand. That kind of deliberate limit will feel familiar if you have also been following the Defold and Minit jam.

Leave Sunday for the final upload, credits and a fresh browser playthrough. The rules call for English text, and updates pause during voting, so include the controls in the version you submit. Before closing the editor, follow the link out of your jam entry like a player arriving for the first time. When the parcel reaches the hatch there, you’re done.