Post-jam thoughts

The Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam for 2020 has come to a close, and with it it's time for me to say goodbye Uncontrollable Space Flail™.

This was my first time taking part in a game jam, and as a matter of fact Uncontrollable Space Flail™ is my first complete game! As a beginner game dev, it can be quite daunting to put what you've made in front of other people, but I can safely say that the jam was a great experience. The community was super supportive, I got a ton of feedback on the project, and the Flail™ was even featured on a few community streams!

As for the game itself, it is by no means perfect - the enemy variety is quite limited (you can't go much further lower than 1!), the code behind the game is a mess, and the soundscape is equal-opportunity for hearing and deaf people alike - but most importantly, the game is done. And I don't mean that in an exhausted or disappointed way, but rather from the perspective that I managed to actually finish a game and get it in people's hands! And the game finished at #309 / 5,430 in the "Fun" category, which I am extremely happy about - most of the dev time was put into polishing a single mechanic, and apparently people enjoyed the final result.

For many newbies like myself, getting your first product out the door and feature-complete can be a daunting task. All of other projects I've worked on have suffered from the classic beginner's curse of over-ambition. I've heard people say that everyone's first game is an MMORPG, and their second game is Pong, so I suppose that has been proven right in my case: The first major project that I started working on after learning basic movement controls was a Paper Mario -inspired active-turn-based RPG with overworld travel and multiple interlocking elemental affinity systems that tie into character growth and combat mechanics, with extra details in conversation systems and yadda yadda yadda. That project died, and my 2nd project and first game was about a space ship going right and swinging a flail around. The time pressure of a 48h jam and the support of a community can do wonders for a mindset.

I've uploaded a version 1.1 of the game that fixes the broken respawn system, and adds in a final score after a run - something that was intended to be in the final product anyway, but was left unfinished due to having 15 minutes left to upload the build. I won't likely come back to Uncontrollable Space Flail™ in the future, but I am extremely happy with how it came out, and I hope that my future projects will be equally well received when they get out of my personal development hell!