Industry veterans Rick Davidson & Tim Ruswick* are joined by Vimlark, an indie game developer, YouTuber and Game Jam enthusiast to talk about, well… Game Jams and top tips.

He’s been involved in more than 40 Game Jams, there’s no one better to talk to about our upcoming Game Jam than Vimlark!

(*Rick has more than 14 years experience in the game dev industry, working on IP's that include Mario, Transformers, Captain America and Mortal Kombat. He's done it all, from Game Designer, Producer, Creative Director and Executive Producer to GameDev.tv's very own Instructor extraordinaire. Tim Ruswick is a successful YouTuber and indie dev, who's created more than 30 games in the last 5 years (wow!), and joined GameDev.tv as our marketing monster).

Listen to the whole chat here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw0f870bhm4

Want tips for entering your first Game Jam? Be sure to check out this short video for the Top 5 Tips For Joining Your First Game Jam

Our 'AHA' moments

  • Don’t over scope your game in a game jam
  • Write new code to improve muscle memory
  • 10 day game jams are respectful of your time and commitments
  • Don’t leave submitting your game until the last moment, make sure to playtest and iron out any bugs beforehand.

What to Expect from Your First Game Jam (1:20 - 5:30)

When starting your first Game Jam don’t get hung up on making a fully-fledged and great game. Vimlark suggests that you think of the Game Jam as an exercise where you’ll get to test out how to do things and approach the game as if it’s a demo.

You’ll get a better understanding of how to create actual games from experience gained during Game Jams and it’s a great way to receive feedback and see how others interpreted the same idea.

Is It Okay to Bring a Project You've Previously Worked on Into A Game Jam? (11:37 - 14:27)

Most Game Jams have their own set of rules and guidelines, make sure you read them before getting started. There’s usually information about the theme and what premade assets can be used during the particular Game Jam.

Vimlark doesn’t think you should bring in a whole game. However, using a project you’ve previously worked on is okay, if you’re using some of the simple code you’ve written, such as camera movement, player movement and other basic functions.

He also recommends that you don’t copy and paste existing code from other projects. It’ll help improve muscle memory if you manually type the code, repetition helps memorise things.

Why The GameDev.tv Game Jam is 10 Days (1:08:03 - 1:12:06)

We’ve decided to make our Game Jam last for 10 days because we know a lot of people will be super busy with work, school, studying and other life commitments. With 10 days there’ll be a weekend on either side of the week, that'll give participants 4 days of weekend to complete their entry.

We respect your time and we don’t expect you to work on your game for 10 whole days! We’ve just made the window as large as possible to allow you to realistically work on your game. Most publishers want you to approach them as soon as possible, you’ll have less bargaining power the longer you leave it.

We hope these tips will serve you well going into our Game Jam and good luck! We can’t wait to play your submissions and don’t forget all submissions get a FREE course!

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Remember, we host live develogy livecasts every Tuesday at 10pm BST on our YouTube channel. You can catch all the recordings, including this episode, in the Devology Livecast course - it's free to join, and also on our YouTube Channel.

Until next time, happy dev'ing!