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Thanks for reading.

It's been a while since I followed this up.  Over the last 8 months or so I ended up nearly homeless, eventually moved to a new home and currently getting used to a new routine.

Once the dust settles I hope start driving forwards again.

Taking part in the recent GDTV game jam was a start to this process.  It didn't quite work out as I would have liked but there were a few successes for me in the jam.

Thanks for commenting.

I understand the scheduling limts, and the need to be selective.

I highly appreciate the team hosting the jam every year.  My 1st jam was this one in 2024, and I've been back again ever since, it always has a great community.

My post was aimed at highlighting a desire for more advice commentary on some less well developed submissions.  I really enjoy the content posted to YouTube by the team, especially the little challenge videos, and the discussions on key topics are normally quite interesting as there's multiple perspectives discussed.

Thank you for the jams and the community.  In the words of Arnie, "I'll be back!"

Yep, your submission page will show the average ratings you received in each category, and an adjusted value if you didn't have many ratings.

It normally also tells you what position your game was in for each category in the overall rankings.

Thanks for playing.

There is more than a bit of work needed to get it to where it needs to be, I wasn't able to put as much time into it as I would have liked, but it is playable(?) Sort of.

Thanks for playing.

At the end I was a bit short of time so I wasn't able to round things off as nicely as I would have liked, thanks for the feedback.

At the end of the jam, and when the results are in, the team at GDTV have said they'll review the "winners" from the voting.

This is normally the games that rated highest in each of the categories.

While I understand that they only have a limited time scheduled to be able to look at the games we've made, I personally would like to see some time for some other games in the jam as well.

I think this because GDTV is about learning how to make games, and while even the highest rated games could have issues to allow for suggestions and possible improvements, I think many of us could benefit from them commenting on games that didn't quite make the cut.

I'm not suggesting they look for examples that are barely games, but those that have a solid base and are in need of larger improvement than the "winning" games.  I think commentary on those submissions could give a bit more back to the community, reassuring less experienced devs and improve the overall value to people participating in the jam.

This is just my own thought on the matter, what do you think?

I've hit the point where I've done everything I'm going to for the jam now, so I just wanted to say thank you to GDTV, to everyone that played my game and gave feedback, and to everyone I've engaged with during the jam.

I'll admit I didn't get around to playing as many games as I would have liked, but I enjoyed the ones I've played, and the overall experience of the jam has been enjoyable once again.

I look forward to participating again next year!

I'm not saying don't use it, I was stating my opinion and asking how much of your final game was your own work, there is a distinct difference between using a tool to support your own work, and telling someone or something to do the work for you.

I also think you're missing the point of the jam, game jams are, more often than not, set up as an opportunity to learn from the experience of designing and making a game, if your game was pretty much entirely made by AI, then what did you learn?  The only thing I've learned by playing your game is that AI can build a game, and that it will likely be better than my own work.  No wonder people fear for their jobs in the creative, tech and financial sectors, AI is already having a drastic, negative, impact on some people's lives because of how it is being used by businesses.  People are losing their jobs by the thousands in some industries, after their work has been used to train the AI's used to replace them.  Even in my own work place, a supermarket, we have an AI controlled cleaning robot, AI contolled shelf gap monitoring system, AI controlled pallette delivery checker, self servive checkouts that they want to add AI to monitor shoppers for stealing.  Mist of these systems don't always function aa desired, but the reality is that people have lost their jobs, or jobs have been taken out of the market as a result of these solutions, e.g. 2 less cleaners per week per store (roughly 800 jobs lost), 4 less shelf fillers per week, (~1600 jobs lost), ~10 less depot workers per week (~30 jobs lost), self monitoring tills could result in at least 4 less cashiers per week (~1600 jobs lost).

You call it a tool, what do you do when you can't work, have a home, or eat because you're local employers consider the tool of AI to be more cost effective than an actual employee.  I know this is an extreme scenario, but if we're not careful, this the way things are headed.

I like the visual style of the game, the music and sound effects are pretty good as well.

I didn't really feel like I engaged with the game, it felt almost like a collection of little minigames rather than a complete experience.

I'm not entirely sure what it needs to make it better, but for me a game is more than just moving a mouse and clicking a button, or just moving left and right in other phases of the game.

For a jam game though, not a bad submission.

The concept is interesting, definitely a game of the modern age ...

It seems to work ok, even if it feels a little clunky to move about at times.  Not a bad submission.

This feels more a proof of concept or draft of an idea for what could be an interesting 3D puzzle game.

At the moment the design seems very rough, but what's there works.

I hope you get around to doing more with this, it could be a pretty fun game with more levels and some different puzzles.

Fling, Crash, Fling, Crash, Fling, Fling ... Crash! Pretty much sums up my attempt to play.

I like how it works, it could do with some audio, but otherwise it is a pretty good game.

Like the art style and the music choice.

I think the mechanics could do with a bit of work though, just to make things a bit more intuitive.

Thanks for the game.

Not a bad start.  The shifting dimensions and the inclusion of story dialogue definitely adds something interesting to the game.

The camera perspective and the physics collisions need work, but overall a nice submission.

Went to have a look, but I couldn't run it through web browser on my laptop.

I kept getting a WebGL2 Error that I think might be to do with the resolution the game tries to run in, my laptop only supports up to 1920x1200, and I can see from the game page app box that the game is trying to run in a higher resolution than that.

I can see that others have been able to run the game ok, so I consider this to be because of my laptop.

As I cannot run it, I have decided not to vote as I cannot give it a fair vote, Good Luck in the Jam.

I just wasn't entirely sure of where to go, ended up in a few dead ends (nice scenery though).

Overall I can see it being a really fun game with a bit of refinement.  The blending in and sneaking about seems somewhat inspired by the Hitman game(s), needing a slow and steady playstyle rather than rushing in.

Interesting way to play a puzzle game.

Everything seems pretty tidy and works as expected.

The only problem I had was the UI scaling to full screen on my laptop, I have a 1920x1200 screen, so at full screen the edges left and right were slightly cut off.

Thanks for the game.

Reminds me of so many time waste mobile games I've seen or played over the years, some of them before the age of smart phones.

Nice game though, thanks.

I think I found an unintended cheat.

Because the "spark" is always moving towards to the pointer location, if you let the spark catch up to it, the spark bounces around the pointer, meaning you can "carry" the spark to the end so long as you don't rush things.

Nice game though, thank you.

I like what you did with the visual style, and the overall concept is pretty interesting.

Thanks for the game.

Fun idea, nice graphics, overall a pretty fun game.

I think it needs some music, and some bits of the gameplay (e.g. camera, some idea of a target location, etc.) could use some refinement.

Otherwise a good submission, thanks for the game.

Not a bad submission.

I think the gameplay balance needs a bit of looking at to improve on what's here though.  The name is Power Shot, and while there is indeed a Power Shot ability, finding the time to use it is a bit difficult.  I think there needs to be a bit of balancing between the speed of the enemies and how often they shoot at you to give more opportunities to use the Power Shot ability, or as an alternative, a power up that turns every shot into a Power Shot for a limited time.

Calm and relaxing, connect the dots to make your own pictures.

It has a nice vibe.

Nice relaxing music, good domino physics, does exactly what it says.

Thanks for playing.

This is the first game where I focussed on trying to make a full soundtrack rather than just 1 or 2 bits of music.  I got lucky in the theme for the jam because I game up with the game idea in preparation for the jam and started creating assets before the start of the jam.  A lot of that time was spent on the music.

As for the shortcut, the door to no where wasn't really supposed to be accessible, but by the time I realised I'd forgotten to close it off, I didn't have the time left to fix it.

I know the controls need refining to make the platforming better, so I wouldn't suggest it's just you ...

My own view in this jam is to give 1 star if there's no story, but mainly because of 2 reasons:

• In this jam, the overall is a chosen rating, not an aggregate of other categories.
• The second is that a game that doesn't require or have a story should not expect to recive a good story rating as the design of the game did not have a story.  This is just my personal view, for example, my own submission did not have sound effects, so I wouldn't expect my own submission to be rated highly on SFX.

In a jam where the overall rating is automatically defined, I might approach this differently.

At the end of the day, what ratings you give is based on your own perceptions of the game, the work you feel has gone into it, and what you think is an appropriate rating.  Everyone's opinion is different and is based on their own perspectives.

When the results are tallied at the end, better games tend to get better results regardless of what 1 person has voted.  Itch also tries to use a bit of math to adjust the final results to balance them against the number of ratings you received to further reduce 1 or 2 errant votes from seriously hurting a submission.

Thanks for playing.

I see connections in connecting punches, and connecting techniques.

I see a lot of comments about AI usage and notice you appear to have used AI to build your code.  I also see that you have been trying to learn Godot and GDScript.

While you have managed to make a fairly cohesive game, and managed to integrate everything reasonably well, I have to ask, how much did you learn?  While it doesn't appear to be listed, was AI used for Art as well?

What I am seeing at the moment is the generation of Code and Art (possibly), and usage of 3rd party audio.  Not leaving much room for any of your own work.

While it is a personal perspective, I don't so much have a problem with the use of AI services in general, but I disagree with how most AI services have acquired their training data.  Where you've used those services in your project, it makes it seem like you only created the idea and integrated the generated materials.  For a game jam, where there is no real prize other than the experience gained, I feel that using AI can cheat you out of the experience you otherwise would have gained, if not used appropriately.

If you make any other games without the usage of AI, I would like to see what you come up with.  The idea for this one was interesting, the visual style was good, and everything fit together to make an interesting game which makes me suspect that you could create something of a similar quality with enough practice and experience.

If the use of AI was relatively limited, and most of the game is your own work, it might be useful to expand the description on your game page to explain where and how AI has been used, and maybe a rough breakdown of the amount of work you did compared to the AI services you used (e.g. 30% AI, 50% you, 20% Audio 3rd Party).

I see connections in connecting punches, and connecting techniques.

I see a lot of comments about AI usage and notice you appear to have used AI to build your code.  I also see that you have been trying to learn Godot and GDScript.

While you have managed to make a fairly cohesive game, and managed to integrate everything reasonably well, I have to ask, how much did you learn?  While it doesn't appear to be listed, was AI used for Art as well?

What I am seeing at the moment is the generation of Code and Art (possibly), and usage of 3rd party audio.  Not leaving much room for any of your own work.

While it is a personal perspective, I don't so much have a problem with the use of AI services in general, but I disagree with how most AI services have acquired their training data.  Where you've used those services in your project, it makes it seem like you only created the idea and integrated the generated materials.  For a game jam, where there is no real prize other than the experience gained, I feel that using AI can cheat you out of the experience you otherwise would have gained, if not used appropriately.

If you make any other games without the usage of AI, I would like to see what you come up with.  The idea for this one was interesting, the visual style was good, and everything fit together to make an interesting game which makes me suspect that you could create something of a similar quality with enough practice and experience.

If the use of AI was relatively limited, and most of the game is your own work, it might be useful to expand the description on your game page to explain where and how AI has been used, and maybe a rough breakdown of the amount of work you did compared to the AI services you used (e.g. 30% AI, 50% you, 20% Audio 3rd Party).

I created a very rough state machine to handle animations and movement, but it needs work as it's not very well refined.

Health and damage was planned but I ran out of time to implement it fully, most of my focus was spent on experimenting with music, music transitions and the dialogue system, and in the end I ran out of time.

I'm pleased so many people like the dog sprite, all the animations are only a few frames each, and only 32x32 pixels, so I tried to make the animations as close to how a dog moves as I could.  My nutter of a dog is always wanting to play, so I have good source material for how a dog moves.

A few people seem to falling into the void.

It was an error on my part, but I'm thinking of eventually hiding an easter egg in there ...

Thanks for giving it a go.

Thanks for playing.

Character+Door+Empty is not the master or end of the game.  That's where you talk to the character and get told to double back ... There's a second path to take to carry on.

By the time I realised I had forgotten to make that door not work, it was too late to fix it.

I get your point about the jumping, controls are an area I know I need to improve and I will try to remember this point when I get around to doing more with this.

I'm not saying the information wasn't there, but that I didn't find or see the information, even on going through the tutorial link from the menu.  It seemed to skip through the information and I couldn't go back through the info within the how to play so I didn't know there was more to see.

The control layout was different to what I knew, figured out most of them but not all it seems.  As mentioned, it's been a few days, so I can't recall further comments I might have made about music, sound or experience, and I've not had the time to revisit it yet.

I never aim for the top spot in a jam, mostly because I know I likely won't have the time to think about polish, but also because I tend to find the feedback I get more valuable.

I still consider myself to be learning, so every jam normally includes an experiment or 2, and is normally a different style of game to what I have made before.

The bit I didn't enjoy with this one is that I got so close to the deadline that I didn't even have time to fully test the build I uploaded.

Luckily, none of the feedback has been outside of expectation on the technical aspects.

The worst bits of feedback are not the ones that target you or suggest your game is bad, it's the ones that point out those simple things you forgot.

I realised a little while ago that I was doing jams, scoping games, getting them built, and questioned why I wasn't doing it fully outside of the jams.

Here's the conclusions I made:

• When I do a jam, whether I'm working otherwise or not, the deadline allows me to think about it as I would an actual job.  I set time aside in my day or week to work on the discrete tasks to get the result of a playable build by the end of the jam.  Multiple factors define how much time I can afford and how much work I can actually do, so the work is scoped around that.
• In a jam, the objective is to get a playable build and get it submitted.  While I aim for at least a reasonable level of quality, the final quality of a submission is not as important in a jam as actually getting a build out.  This results in my being able to be more forgiving of myself when it comes to what I am happy to consider as "good enough".  Outside of a jam, my definition of "good enough" tends to be based on what I would expect as a quality standard if I was to choose to buy or play a game, most of the fun to play and "good" quality games can have a financial cost attached to them, and while it might be unrealistic to expect to be able to match that quality on my own, there is a point, I hope, at which I will be able to think to myself that my own work is "good" enough for me to consider asking others to pay for it.
• While uploading games to itch for game jams, or even just because I make something I want to share, is simple and easy, the potential of turning those projects into a revenue stream on itch is limited without a lot of extra effort in advertising a project through other sources and mediums.  This means that, if I want to consider trying to make money, I would need to use other market places to increase sales potential, and those market places will have differing requirements on build quality.  Regardless of the market place, there would still need to be advertising and marketing to build a sales footprint, and it seems to be becoming more of a defining factor in the success of a game as more and more games are being released on various platforms making it more difficult to stand out because of quality alone.
• From experience, I can also say that there is a lot more work required to get a game uploaded to some market places, and that it requires handling business and legal documentation to prove to the market place that your game is appropriate for them to sell on their platform.  Not many devs or dev youtubers seem to talk about these steps, likely because they don't draw people in, but if you want to progress outside of the jams, it is work that needs to be done, eventually.
• When it comes to scope and time, I find the act of making a game needs to be treated like a job, with discrete tasks that can be managed and tracked.  The effort made in organising the work keeps you on track and allows you to monitor your progress.  You don't need to define a full scope or timescale at the start of a project, but as you work through a project you can then refine the scope to what you need, and refine your overall timescale based on the experience you gain by working through a project.
• Reviewing your current position in a project is useful to plan out the next steps, figure out unknown elements in need of investigation, identify gaps or bloat, and get an idea of how much is left to actually do.
• The business and legal stuff at the end can be boring, complicated, and time consuming.  It is not normally as simple as: finish build, upload, people play, win.  Itch really spoils us with this.

Not a bad plan, it is a drawback of Godot that you sometimes have to 'make' things work.

I'm getting to the stage with my own dev skills that I can build my own systems, nodes and classes in the Godot engine, and have even extended the engine once or twice simple ways to expedite some parts of my projects.

I wouldn't call myself an expert developer or programmer, ir even an expert in Godot, but each jam and each project helps me improve.

When prigressing through the how to play it seemed to speed throughto the end for me and I didn't notice info on controls, while trying to play, I could set a bridge but couldn't figure out how to move to the next block to progress.  I could turn the pointer icon, but couldn't move.

It's been a few days now so I can't recall anything more sorry, will have to have another look when I get the chance.

I'd probably have to agree.

While Unreal and Unity tend to use c#, which isn't too difficult, I found gdscript a bit more natural for me as I was already somewhat experienced with python from a past job that used a lot of unix back end systems.

Unity extends this into prefabs and objects, while Unreal uses blueprints and has a pretty well developed visual scripting system as well as I understand it.

Not suggesting that c# is more difficult than any other language, but that the syntax of gdscript was more aligned to what I already knew.  The added benefit with Godot for me is that with it being so lightweight, I can do gamedev on a laptop.  And if it works on my laptop, it should work on most systems without much issue.

The node system took a moment to figure out, but it is definitely an interesting game.

I had a few windows say error, but I don't know if that is part of the gameplay or a notification that something went wrong.