Hi, everyone!

So this is going to be a late post-mortem about the 2016 Cartoon Network Game Jam. I’m going to write my opinion about what was cool and what could have been done differently.

First of all, I am going to say that I didn’t want to participate in this Game Jam. I was asked to take the place of a friend because he wasn’t going to be able to go and didn’t want to leave the team without a programmer. I said yes even though I didn’t want to, but I don’t regret my decision.

The game jam started on a Friday at 18:00. But we weren’t able to start until Saturday at 21:00. Although it was a lot of time wasted, I guess we didn’t feel the impact.

Our team was formed by students and professors of “Escuela Da Vinci”. We had a musician from the second semester, an artist from the first semester and an artist ,who is a teacher, a game designer from the fifth semester and myself as a programmer. It was really cool to work with all of them. It is always a nice experience to work with students and colleagues.

The main thing I liked about our game was that even though it was inspired by Downwell, we didn’t copy exactly anything. Most of the games made in game jams, tend to copy-paste others games. Though we took the mechanic of falling on a procedural level, we didn’t fire down, we just plane without limit. The game isn’t endless and also, we have a final boss.

The things I liked the most about the game jam were:

• Working with people I had never worked with before. And the wonderful, fast and great work they did.
• Participating in a live game jam for the first time. All the game jams I have been a part of  before, I have worked from home. This time, being and working side to side with my teammates and with the others teams was great.
• Being able to show our game to everyone live and have live feedback. Also, being able to see the other team’s games explained by them was very interesting.
• Having an oportunity to show our work and get to know each other was cool.
• Seeing some of my current students working in their games for the game jam was extremly rewarding. Even most of people weren’t from the institute, it was lovely to see some students in action!
• Knowing that at the end, if you worked hard, you have a new game made by you for sure and that is something I love from all game jams.

Stuff I would have done differently/change for the next time:

• A game jam with no winners or prizes is not so motivating.
• It would be cool to have a place where we could show all the games of the game jam. Like a special section in Cartoon Network, but for now, there are no signs that that’s going to happen.

Other than that, it was a really wonderful experience and I would like to participate again!

If you want, you can check out the game here: https://monoflauta.com/all-games/no-mas-dulces/