How to successfully fail at finishing projects
I have basically failed the Thinky Jam 6, a jam where you're only supposed to spend 48 hoursAs time is fake, I can still 'say' I probably spent less than 48 working hours on the game, but obviously that is not the intent, which is to make the whole game in a weekend, not interpret that in a segmented speedrun way., with DISCONCORDIA0 which is currently a nonexistent project, and am definitely not helping the problem by writing this article instead of writing the game. I haven't really failed game jams or deadlines before so I'd like to contemplate what went wrong.
Did it go wrong?
It gave me huge productivity like every jam. My planetary clock automation game DECA was something I am utterly shocked to have made in 2.5 days (even if I did have a lot of mechanics and themes planned in my head about a potential project). The converseI feel like you're actually supposed to use 'obverse' in this situation but that word is very scary and reminds me of Two Sides of the Same Turnabout so let's not is that I ended up with a lower amount of intrinsic motivation to expand the project. So it went wrong that it's not finished but it went right in that it made the project exist at all.
To be fair I didn't fail DISCONCORDIA1 either! That one I spent 2 months on and every beat was there in month 1, it just need a lot of extra bonus patches in the next month.
Also there was a game jam with the theme "Reflection" that I came up with a pretty good story/theme/plot for that has some good mechanics/story and also was never complete. Maybe that's why people do this 'collab' thing. Maybe I need to make a game jam for people's incomplete jam games.
Yes the graphics suck I didn't know how to really draw footprints in a good way. It's about making footprints/paths and mirrored reflections in a snowstorm. It probably doesn't look like it.
Stories must be written to fit the whole way through
To be 80-90% done making a story game is pretty much 0% done, because some wrong detail or poorly written line ruins the whole game, even failed player conception ruins it. Single-page mysteries are much easier to work with, and some people with more self-control than me did those for the jam.
I've never designed a game this way but I do wonder what it'd be like if I made a game that was always a 'finished product' at each step. This feels inefficient but you would never end up stuck with an unrelease-able product at any point.
Story suggests scope creep
This doesn't quite feel as true as it does when you actually write a solid plot, but there is a serious problem with your characters getting away from you and not letting you wrap things up easily, or forcing certain events to happen as a consequence of their traits and behavior. Before you experience it yourself, it feels like 100% fancy roleplay to say that. Now it's like 50%.
The version I 'could have' released would be missing lots of great details and multiple endings I came up with in the week or two afterwards, now I don't know what to do.
What is wrong with me?
My self perception is that I can look at a situation and instantly figure out what's up with it and how to extend and expand it. This has been true every time I finish a game or look at someone else's project. So when you stare at your project for an hour or two without progress it makes it tempting to get distracted doing anything else hoping it gives motivation and inspiration for your project. I guess this is a reminder that you aren't really your thoughts, or something.
This is also likely the reason I have like 20 projects at once, under the 'idea' that you can work faster overall if you're constantly changing your mentality and have more chances to make a breakthrough after shuffling your mind around a lot. This of course means limited focusing time on any one project, and so may not be recommended.
Failing a second challenge
I was planning to even submit this to the Mystery Craft jam (as some others were mentioning it and it's allowed for it) due to that one's theme of 'Death', combining with the 'Locked Room' one. Ironically that one literally tells you to only make a 15 minute game and mine could take way longer to think about. Whoops again.
But not only that, there was a "fake"I mean all jam deadlines are 'fake' in some sense but perhaps this was especially fake for having no page at all "30 Day Empty Room Challenge" jam that I also seemingly failed:
DISCONCORDIA0 was supposed to be Empty Room + Locked Room + Death. But I had a second plan! Yes a second plan. A genius plan, to make an ambitious project that gets out of control and will likely spend 30 days or more thinking about for your "2 day" weekend project, then make some quick 2-day one for your "30 day" one. Why not increase the irony, if it got shared and popular despite having far less effort and thought put into it than any of my other work.
In fact here it is right now!
Whoops, well obviously I was going to link to a newly created playable game here, but as it turns out I have also failed to write and make this one, with some level of scope creep of wanting to visualize the events onscreen, then coming up with 3 different great potential ideas and not settling on one.
How did that even happen?
Maybe it'll show up someday.
Christopher Sououeyuvey, collaborative Lingo designer, has also failed the 30 Day Empty Room Challenge, being busy with random 4-hour bugfixes that players won't notice in a fork of Unreal. At least milvanis (a different Lingo designer) has made an empty room.
Blurry teaser of what was supposed to be here:
