I won. With a bad game.

Check out the source code for the game, or try it out here. (Warning: It’s bad…)

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Prelude

I had got into programming in 2021, and loved it since, and made some very basic projects. Most of these projects focused on gamedev, but none of them were proper, and most were not even fully finished. I had participated in some game jams before, but had only got to submitting to one or two, and not winning any.

But that was about to change!

The new beginning

It’s the July of 2024, and I discovered Arcade through the GitHub Education Newsletter, and decided to participate in it.

Then at the start of August, the Arcade Jam was announced.

And I decided to take part.

During the next 24 hours, everyone submitted an idea for the theme, and then voting opened up to decide the theme.

The theme

Finally, after a wait of 3 days, the theme was announced.

Loopholes!

I was super excited because this was a great theme, and immediately started brainstorming.

And after a lot of notes and sketches, this is what I came up with:

You are trapped in a simulation with a world full of bugs and glitches. To escape, you must exploit these flaws to reach a hidden underground area. Your journey involves navigating through challenges, discovering secrets, and manipulating the environment to your advantage.

Or basically:

You are a box, trapped in a maze full of obstacles, but the obstacles are really easy to cross, because they are filled with bugs (think walls with no colliders… etc).

And then I immediately start working on it procrastinated. For the next full week.

Awakening

With only a week left till the end of the jam, I finally convinced myself to start working on my game.

First I made a cube. And then I made and attached a PlayerController script to it. Aaand I had my player.

Then I watched some tutorials (Brackeys), and learned ProBuilder.

After mastering ProBuilder (watching one tutorial), I got to work with the level designing. That was pretty easy. I just made whatever came to my mind.

Using ProBuilder, and skipping complex 3D modeling and embracing simple geometric shapes, I was able to build multiple levels in a couple of days.

Oh and of course I also added a pool. A pool that you can walk on, because why not (definitely not because I didn’t how to make proper water.).

Then I polished all of the levels I had designed, and joined them all! This is where I had to get creative. So I added some hallways, fake walls, some interactive boxes, more fake walls, and there, I had my simulation world!

Of course, I am not going to give away all the secrets of the game, because that would spoil it…

Now came the time to code the logic. I already had my player controller. So I scrapped together some scripts for interactions, collision logic etc.

And then I also added a menu screen with a bit of text (with really bad styling) and a play button, and a game over screen.

The key mechanic of the game was finding the weakness in the levels boundary. Be it in the form of hidden interactable blocks, fake walls, walkable pools.

And I think that was it.

Yeah, I did not add any sfx or music. I hadn’t added any audio to any of my projects before. I realised after this game jam from the feedback I received that I should add audio/sfx/music to stuff.

Submitting

Ok so all of the stuff I did in the last section happened in the span of the full week. So like now I had to submit my game.

I exported a WebGL build from Unity, troubleshot why it didn’t work on my github pages site, found the solution (which was enable Decompression Fallback in the build settings), and got the game working on the web! Yayy!

And I improved the game’s GitHub repository, made the README just a teeny tiny bit better (so now it contained the game’s title, description, controls, and URL, compared to just the game’s title before).

Oh and I also thought up of a cool name for the game!

Glitch Out!

And finally I filled out the submission form!

Voting

Voting opened up. Every game was going to be peer-voted! In the format of random 1v1 matchups. And all of the other games were pretty good. As I got through the other games, I kept on finding ways in which I could have improved and polished my game more. Like audio.

And then came the 3 days wait before the results were going to be announced.

Results

And then this happened!!!

I couldn’t believe it at first… Like my game was ok theme-wise, but other than that, it was terrible.

But I had got second place!! And thus was among the top 5 winners! And I was also going to get a prize (which since the jam was part of a bigger event, Arcade, was a token multiplier, but for me, let’s say it was the equivalent of a Keychron K6 Pro), but of course I hadn’t participated for the prize, I had participated for the experience.

But winning a prize was a great bonus!

Epilogue

Overall, this game jam was a great experience for me! And my first win in a game jam, which felt like an epic moment! I learnt a lot of things (like the importance of audio…), and had a lot of fun! And for the first time, I beat procrastination, and actually had fun making the game. I was motivated for it.

Oh and btw, the game I submitted for the jam is open-source, and you can also try it out here. (Warning: It’s bad…)