Hello! GMTK Game Jam 2021 is now over, their Discord server is now closed for non-patrons, and it's time to conclude the event.

I'll start with a preamble first. I participated in GMTK Game Jam 2020 with a game named Lost Signal, and it has taken 85th place in the Overall category. While this is an amazing accomplishment, I felt like it has raised the bar for me. Joining the 2021 jam, I was anxious about failing this time, disappointing everyone who might have seen my previous game.

With that in mind, I waited for the theme announcement that happened at 1 AM for me. "Joined Together". While lying in bed trying to fall asleep I was thinking about what I can create. 2D platformer with two characters connected with a chain? No, it might be too common and I don't want to fiddle with physics. What about joining the player together with enemies? Make the joining happen on direct eye contact, replace enemies with some kind of idols (or eyedols, get it?), and you'll get the mechanic for Eyedol Contact. The game needs a goal so I decided to require the player to have all buttons pressed simultaneously by placing the character and connected eyedols on them. Yep, another top-down tile-based puzzle.

On day one I went straight into development. Made some WIP tiles and sprites and started implementing the main mechanic - connecting to eyedols when the player in line with them and they are not obstructed by a wall. Overall, it took me about 2-3 hours of intense keyboard mashing and game testing to get this working.

Then I decided to update the graphics as I didn't like the colors. After sifting through Lospec I decided to go with OIL-6 palette. It has a nice contrasting colors and is close to my WIP color palette - yellow and blue-ish was the colors I planned to use.

With that done, it was time to implement the main menu and complete the game loop. Thanks to the simplicity of Godot, it was easy to implement, and I had a lot of time to spare that day. 

I used that time to generate some sounds using LabChirp and polish the game (add some animations here and there, some particle effects etc.). Also, I contacted Fırat Zengin asking for help with the music, and they made a simple tune to go along with the game.

It was around 6 PM when I finished adding sounds and polish so I decided to implement one more mechanic. I wanted the player to be able to slide along the tethers if they have two eyedols on opposite sides (e.g. left and right) as it would increase the number of possible levels. Combined with yet another graphics rework, it took three hours to get done.

With the day getting to its end, I created some levels and did one great thing: I uploaded the game on Itch, submitted it to the jam, created a simple yet nice thumbnail and advertised it in the GMTK Discord. In hindsight, it was an amazing move: it generated around 300 views on that day and about 700 views the next day. More than that, I think these views were mostly organic as these were people actually interested in the game. Finally, that concludes the first day of the jam.

The second day was less action-packed for me. Either I was lazy or burnt-out, not sure.

I decided that the soundtrack needs an upgrade: I liked the original track and the atmosphere it created but I wanted it to have more juice. I contacted Levi Ellis with that request and oh boy, I'm so glad I did. After that, I haven't done much besides creating more levels and redrawing the tileset (I decided to use autotiles).

I made one big mistake though: I agreed to credit the musicians but haven't added necessary credits in the game. I tried to make it up with credits on the page and in the thumbnail, and I added them in game after the jam, but I still feel bad for that.

After all that, submissions period ended. It was time to rate games and get ratings. Remember that early promotion I did on the first day? Basically, it helped me to get the ratings I need without any further actions from my side (like doing rate for rate and stuff). I submitted the game for streamers to play here and there but it wasn't the main source of ratings for me.

All this resulted in Eyedol Contact getting 43rd place in the Overall category with 189 ratings, and also earning Indie Game of the Week Award. The game got a second or two of footage in Mark's video but unfortunately it didn't get into the top 20.

After reading the wall of text above, here are my takeaways from this jam:

• Early marketing is important. Basically, you want to have a working game with an appealing thumbnail on day 1. The GMTK Discord is not as spammy as it gets during the ratings period so you get more exposure if you plug your game.
• Color palettes are important, perhaps more important than shapes. I got a lot of praise in the comments regarding the visuals. Of course, part of it is the audio and animations/particles, but I believe that using the palette allowed to get away with my programmer art. Also, there is a video demonstrating how much the colors matter (not sponsored).
• Don't forget to credit your team members and/or people who helped you. This is obvious but I screwed it up anyways.
• Use the time you have left to expand your game. I had an idea of adding one more mechanic into the game: disconnecting eyedols. I believe it would take me an hour or two to implement, and it would've added more depth into the puzzles, possibly securing a place in the top 20. I was too lazy to do it and now I regret that.
• Simple sounds, animations and particles make your game feel good to play. This is called "game juice" and it's no secret but looks like it's still often overlooked. Also, I didn't have it in Lost Signal. Here's a small talk showcasing how much it matters.
• It's hard to get difficulty right. While quite a few people liked the levels and difficulty curve, I wish I've made more easier levels for those who are not much into puzzle games to make the game more accessible. I think I could've done that if I did more early playtesting.

Well, that was an essay. I hope you enjoyed reading it and/or learned something new from my humble experience.