GMTK 2025 Retrospective

I did it! heck yeah! I have completed and published my first game.

Why?

I didn’t plan on joining the Jam until the theme announcement. I was watching on Twitch someone plan their own game and I had an idea, an itch. I knew no-one else would create my idea, I had to do it.

What went well

• I finished and published a game!
• Godot was easy and quick to pick up. I had been learning and tinkering with Godot about six months ago and it quickly came back to me.
• The free assets on Itch meant that I could focus on the rest of the game, I found the ship sprites almost instantly and while I always planned on replacing them, they were perfect.

What could have gone better

• UI - The biggest set back in this games journey was the UI interface, I needed: Start menu, pop-up menu and a game over screen. The problem was that the code looking for the pause / un-pause key-press ran simultaneously for all three menus at once. A popup would open, close and run 200 times a second. The fix for this ended up being to share the start-up and pause menu objects and in-code replace the text. I was lucky here that the pause text could be simple. It was only when I had slept on the issue I could come to a solution, but I think I lost around 3 or 4 hours on this one issue.

• Time - I started this project without warning to my partner and they had to deal with my new obsession for multiple nights in a row. <3. I also had a day festival booked in on the Sunday so I lost out on final polish my game would have benefitted from. Next time I will schedule in the Jam when the dates are announced.

• Prioritising - The core idea for my game, the “L.O.O.P.” system wasn’t added until nearly the end of development. I spent two days making an Asteroids clone and then the last day making it my own. I think it shows that there is a lot more to game development than we all appreciate. But it is also a reminder to prioritise the important bits. Perhaps a pause menu could have waited until the ship had guns!

• Sounds - I had no time to consider, research or add sounds. I remember in the GMTK game development series, Mark emphasising the importance of sounds and how the game felt real as soon as they were added. This was on my radar for almost the whole development but I am not sure I could have completed the game if I picked up sounds too.

Where I got lucky

• The ChatGPT narrative - the second I read the “drill instructor” style Sci-Fi text ChatGPT created it made my game feel alive. It added the missing context, player drive and flavour I had been missing. I would love to say I could have made everything myself but I am but one person - and by the third day, a very tired and creatively drained person!

• The warm reception - I hugely appreciate the feedback I have had from everyone. All of the comments have been incredibly nice, polite and encouraging. <3

There were many moments over last weekend where I thought that this project would never be finished, another idea to bin, but despite each setback, I made progress forward. I am proud I published something, as the saying goes…

“Done is better than perfect”