Our second gamejam finished earlier this week, and we got a lot of fun entries. Congratulations to all the winners, and everyone that took part. It's a shame that so many people enter but so few win, there were a LOT of good games in this batch.
There's a couple of ways we can improve the GameJams I think. First of all, we need to prohibit entering games that have been released before the jam. It's against the spirit of a jam, in which things are created. Secondly, we probably need to do theme or something, to help avoid people secretly starting work on their entry months before the Jam.
Something I found in this one is that I enjoy way more the games that are short and simple. I don't want to play a jam where you spend the first 3 minutes in a menu, picking your character etc. I want to get straight into it. I'm a baby with no attention span.
So that makes me wonder, shall we have different types of Jams. I think it would be interesting to have more of a tech-toy jam, where instead of making a "game" you make something more like a toy, using some kind of interesting tech you came up with. I'm thinking of things like the way you can draw on windows in Alyx, or the rope physics in TLOU2, or the snow in Red Dead. Cool stuff to play with.
Stuff to think about for next time.