4. Time Management and Finishing Your Game

Time Spent Creating Asteroid Crasher

This is the big one. It is very hard to scope a project or have an idea of how long things will take. The mistake to avoid here is not finishing your game. You need to know when to stop working on something and cut it. Because I streamed the entirety of the development of Asteroid Crasher, I was able to go back and document how long each step took and break down the development work. This is specific to a one-person team and obviously this isn’t a one size fits all approach but this information should give you a rough idea of how you should plan your LD.

The short of it is that you should plan to spend half of the development time building what a lot of programmer/dev types think of as “The Game”. This is the core engine, mechanics, and levels — all with the most low effort art and sounds you can create or use. The other half of the time will be spent on the “Content” or “Polish”. This includes creating all the visual assets, sounds, music, showing it off to people to get feedback (this is invaluable!), and doing the publishing work (screenshots, description, hosting, etc).

This means after you have brainstormed and picked a basic idea for the game you want to make, you need to take the remaining time you have in the jam and divide it by two. Any features not completed by that halfway point need to be cut. As the halfway point looms, don’t think about making the ideal game you have in your mind, think about the best game you can make with the time you have remaining. Of all your crazy ideas, which take the least amount of time to implement and which are the most special/unique? Prioritize those and cut the rest.

Listen to Jake!

For the art side, if art isn’t your thing, don’t be afraid of making something bad. Allocate a set amount of time to each asset and just make something. This should be a learning opportunity. I spent two and a half hours working on music for Asteroid Crasher, and most of it was spent going through an LMMS tutorial to learn how the software works. Use the LD as an opportunity to familiarize yourself with a tool you’d really like to know better.

If you have time left over after you think you are finished, get your game in a submittable state and show it to as many people as you can. Even more than you have already shown it to! Get all the feedback you can before you declare yourself done. It is okay to ignore all the feedback, submit the game, and go to sleep. But, if you have the energy and spoons, make a decision as to whether it is worth it to make the fix/improvement or if you are still happy with the game as-is. I can say that Asteroid Crasher would not have the sick music transition it has in level 3 if I had not taken this step, but I did not have the energy to improve the art. There is only so much you can do in these jams and that’s okay!