Devin Haska
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287 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
287 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "GMTK Game Jam Post-Mortem: 2025 Edition"
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date: 2025-09-14T14:23
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excerpt: My second game jam ever!
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tags:
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- gamejam
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- gamedev
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- pixel-art
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- post
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---
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Once again I participated in this year's [GMTK Game Jam](https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-2025)! There were over 9,000 games made this year. It ran from July 30th to August 3rd, 2025. This year I teamed up with [Old School Blue](https://bsky.app/profile/theforevergm.bsky.social) to make **[Rumor Mill](https://oldschoolblue.itch.io/rumor-mill)**!
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The theme this year was **loop**. There are many ways to interpret the theme - we saw a lot of games that had you playing the same levels repeatedly, drawing loops (lassos), moving in loops... a whole lotta looping. We quickly narrowed in on the office phrase "to keep you in the loop", which naturally lead to our game taking the idea of spreading gossip around the workplace.
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> Start as a gossipy gossipmonger at "SlowDays Inc" and try to become the SULTAN OF SECRETS in the office!
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>
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> Boost the Tea Score of your hot gossip by making sure your coworkers are passing it along to the right people, amplifying its effectiveness (and salaciousness!)
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>
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> Some people love hearing the latest dish from HR, while others hate hearing about the latest lascivious lore from the Engineering Department.
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>
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> Some love to be the first to know, while others hate being kept out of the loop until the last minute!
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## Result
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Our final score from 30 ratings:
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| Criteria | Rank | Score |
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| ---------- | ----- | ----- |
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| Creativity | #819 | 4.067 |
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| Narrative | #1204 | 3.167 |
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| Enjoyment | #1735 | 3.467 |
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| Audio | #1812 | 3.267 |
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| Artwork | #2367 | 3.467 |
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I'm quite pleased with how we fared, especially considering the sheer amount of games that were made! We had a lot of excellent competition. I'm especially proud of the Creativity score, which suggests to me that we found a concept that felt unique and interesting. I was surprised by the Artwork score as a I felt we had a pretty cool art style, but hey that's the breaks sometimes. There were some especially pretty games this year, so I had a lot of competition.
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At the end of the day, we've both decided we like the game enough to keep working on it! There's some fun ideas brewing that I think will work very well as a fun puzzle game.
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<aside>
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I know I said I would continue working on my last game jam game back in 2021 (and we didn't, sadly). This time feels different. We're both energized about our concept and we've started drafting up design documents and are already taking planning seriously. It feels different this time...
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</aside>
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## Planning & Creation
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As I mentioned earlier, we figured out that we had some kind of gossip-spreading game in mind.
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> **Old School Blue**:
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> You have a piece of hot goss to spread, it scores.....5 points, whatever....You have to arrange a set of co-workers to spread the goss and get it back to you. Some co-workers increase the gossip score, some lower it, some double it, some cut it in half, your goal is to make it the juiciest gossip in the office. The set of Coworkers you get to use each round is random, you get 6 and have to use...4 of them, there's 4 places to plug them into the "game board"
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>
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> **wonderfulfrog**:
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> HAH okay maybe there’s something here
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We started toying with some ideas - what if we have different department employees who prefer talking to one group but not the other? Oh, and what about certain people love being first in the loop (or maybe last)? We had some ideas organically brew from that initial concept.
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We eventually arrived at a scoring mechanic being the driving force of the game. The idea is to place employees to maximize your "tea score" such that you progress to the next level.
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> **Old School Blue**:
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> At "Slow Days Inc." the common way to pass the day is passing the latest hot gossip and, as part of HR, you always know the best secrets. Figure out the best way to pass this gossip through the office to ensure the maximum effect and greatest enjoyment. Some coworkers love spilling the tea, others only trust certain coworkers with the juciest bits of lore. The player has a piece of Gossip with a "Tea Score", their goal is to maximize the "Tea Score" when the gossip eventually makes it back to them.
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>
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> The office has a series of cubicles, each cubicle can hold one coworker. The path that the gossip will take is clearly labeled. Each coworker will adjust the score in various ways, based on certain criteria. The player will be given two Co-workers to choose from, only one may be chosen, the other is discarded. The chosen coworker can be dragged into one of the Cubicles and may not be changed after being chosen.
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>
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> Once all Cubicle spots are filled, the goss is spread and a final "Tea Score" is gained. A minimum Tea Score is needed to level up and be promoted to the next HR rank and have a larger office, with more Cubicle Spaces and more Coworkers.
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>
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> "Tom Doubles the Tea Score", "Sandra Halves the Tea Score if she's not the first person to hear about it" "Debra loves to spread goss to Tammy and adds 50% to the goss if Tammy is next" sort of thing.
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Within the first 24 hours or so we had a functioning prototype, which felt great to see. Having a working game so quickly helped us iterate and test out ideas we had.
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Initially we thought gossip might travel between coworkers on a grid (kind of like [Pipe Dream](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Mania)).
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I was playing with the idea of gossip traveling along a line (hence the red/white colours there). Early on we also knew we wanted a “departments” concept, something that would affect the score depending on who talked to who (which is where the coloured borders come from).
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We really wanted to tie into the loop theme though, so we opted with the gossip starting from you, going around a set of cubicles, and arriving back to you to really hammer that theme home.
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We wanted to experiment with branching paths, with the idea being that perhaps your "coworker deck" would function better with the alternate path available. This was a feature we decided to cut to save time.
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## Artwork
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For this game jam I was dead set on using a 1-bit pixel art style. I'm not sure what had me quite so attracted to the style, but I suspect it was the game [Phasing Puller](https://mvln.itch.io/phasing-puller) from the 2021 GMTK Game Jam having a lasting impression on me. I guess [Undertale's](https://undertale.com/) portraits also share this style, although I did not consciously choose the style to imitate Undertale.
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<aside>
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What is 1-bit pixel art?
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Think of this being the same thing as limited to 2 colours. Traditionally, this is white and black, but could be anything like two shades of the same colour.
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But how do you convey shadows and softness? With great difficulty! This is a challenging limitation to work within. Something like dithering is super helpful here!
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</aside>
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It has been several years since my last pixel art drawing, but I found my footing quickly (and had to given our deadline). My first piece of art (besides the concept art) was this portrait:
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I wasn't deliberately going for a [Will Wright](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ZKDrAxpQM4dWkFWowKZ5Rh-970-80.png.webp) vibe, but must've done it unconsciously (we've been exploring another game concept that might involve something from SimCity... my lips are sealed 🤐). I ended up tweaking the portrait a bit to try and move in a different direction, and apparently ended up creating disheveled Hideo Kojima. Oh well.
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Immediately I thought it would be fun to have animated portraits:
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Although decided to scrap that plan due to how little time we had.
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We needed some way to represent coworkers in a "deck of cards" fashion, since we started leaning into a deck-building aspect pretty quickly. ID badges felt like the way to go here, so off I went:
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I wasn't really sure where I was going with this one, but I thought some odd geometric shapes and funky patterns conveyed some kind of "high tech feel" (even though our fictional in-game company is anything but high tech). It was an amusing contrast to me. I also thought it might be fun to add some variation to each ID badge, so created a few options with icons!
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Somehow our conversation turned to J. Jonah Jameson, and naturally that meant he was going to be our second coworker!
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-portrait-concept-3.png" />
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<figcaption>Please get me all the gossip on Spider-man Mr. Parker, if you have the time that is...</figcaption>
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</figure>
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Something wasn't quite right here. The eyes felt a little... small. JJJ is a big personality, so I went back and experimented a bit more and landed on that stern face:
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-portrait-concept-3-1.png" />
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<figcaption>I need all the gossip about Spider-Man, Parker!</figcaption>
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</figure>
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After that I picked a few more "office people" to add to our roster. First was Pam from Archer:
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-portrait-concept-4.png" />
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<figcaption>The watercooler goes "sploosh"</figcaption>
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</figure>
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And I've been watching The Good Wife lately, so why not add Diane Lockhart?
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-portrait-concept-5.png" />
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<figcaption>I bet she loves to open phishing emails...</figcaption>
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</figure>
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I'm having a ton of fun making various portraits, but realizing quickly that we don't have as much time as I estimate we do. I'll need to move onto other visuals... how about the title screen?
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A piece of iconography I latched onto was palm trees. Somehow I felt the tropical vibe was a good fit for "SlowDays Inc". That's how we ended up somewhere vaguely Miami:
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-title.png" />
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<figcaption>I should've added a sun!</figcaption>
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</figure>
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For the logo itself I thought the blue and white looked pretty slick, but accidentally kinda recreated a watercooler motif?
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-logo.png" />
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<figcaption>You can feel the watercooler filling up, right?</figcaption>
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</figure>
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Lastly, we needed a breakroom!
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<figure>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-breakroom.png" />
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<figcaption>Thirsty? Enjoy our SlowDays Inc branded water!</figcaption>
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</figure>
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## Audio
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On top of the visuals, I also got to play the role of sound designer! I did a bit of foley to get the majority of our sounds. For most sounds I used my Blue Yeti, and a bit of finesse inside Audacity. A simple setup, but it worked well!
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The ID badge sounds were created using a deck of cards - I would slide, pick up, place, and generally muck around with them to produce a variety of sounds. I think I recorded over 50 different sounds in total, but pared it down to about 15 (using about 3-6 sounds each for picking up, placing, and hovering cards).
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/pickup1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Pickup 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/pickup2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Pickup 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/pickup3.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Pickup 3</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/shuffle1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Shuffle 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/shuffle2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Shuffle 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/shuffle3.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Shuffle 3</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/place1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Place 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/place2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Place 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/place3.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Place 3</figcaption>
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</figure>
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The coworkers blabbing to each other were recorded by myself and my wife! Again, I ended up recording a bunch of sounds for this and had to pare it down to the best. We knew from the outset we wanted a kind of “wah wah” sound the adults in Peanuts make. How did we do?
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/babble1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Wah-wah 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/babble_lady_1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Wah-wah 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/babble2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Wah-wah 3</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/babble_lady_2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Wah-wah 4</figcaption>
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</figure>
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Various bleeps and bloops came from [sfxer](https://sfxr.me/) (which I was happy to learn is still a thing), and a few online tools for generating “game sounds”.
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/gainedPoints.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Gain Points</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/rumorTransform1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Gossip Transformation 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/rumorTransform4.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Gossip Transformation 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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Lastly, I had to record our cat Ramona for her grand reveal in game. Let me tell you, getting a cat to meow when you want them to is difficult! I think we only got one or two usable ones. I used my phone’s microphone (through the Voice Memo app).
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/cat1.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Meow 1</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<figure>
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<audio controls src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/audio/rm/cat2.wav"></audio>
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<figcaption>Meow 2</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<details>
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<summary>And if you'd like to spoil the surprise, here's Ramona's portrait!</summary>
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<img src="https://cdn.wonderfulfrog.com/images/rm-ramona.png" />
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</details>
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To really sell the office vibe, we sourced some stock sounds of people chatting, microwave beeps, and general ambiance. It really feels like you're having lunch in the breakroom (and someone is microwaving fish _again_).
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Overall I'm super happy with how the sound and ambiance came off.
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## My experience
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Unlike my previous experience in the GMTK game jam, we found our concept pretty quickly, like within an hour or two. Once we have a concept, we can get cracking!
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This game jam took place during the week, and we both decided that we didn't want to take any additional time off, which meant we were balancing work and other commitments while working on the game.
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It had been a long while since I'd mucked around with pixel art (in fact probably since 2021), and it took me a while to "get back into it" again. As always though, once I find my groove I really love it. I had much fun creating spins on "famous office people".
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My time management was fairly balanced compared to the last one. No late nights and constant check-ins kept us both updated and aware of what we were working on.
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Something I tried last game jam (and decided to repeat this time) was getting into "rating exchange groups" in order to get more ratings for my game. My thought was that the more ratings it has, the better result we get. Something I noticed after everything wrapped up was that the majority of the top games never appeared in my ratings exchange. The games at the very top (10 or so), might've had 30 or less ratings.
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I'm beginning to question the strategy of these exchanges. I believe they ended up doing more harm than good. In terms of wanting to "do well", I think we tend to get harder grading rather than organic reviews. On the other hand, I don't know how to get the game "out there" so people can play it. I really don't know what to do. Next time, I will try not joining these exchanges.
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Overall, I had a great time. I'm proud of what we made and feel like we found a novel concept that is worth expanding on. Speaking of which...
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## Post-jam
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I know I said this last time, but I swear this time I mean it! We are continuing to work on the game. I don't want to spoil too much, but we are revisiting some of the core mechanics to develop a vision of the game that matches our expectations. With a game jam you have to set yourself certain limits to save time, but now that we have plenty of time... let's see where we can push things.
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I've spent some time trying to determine a "visual style" of where I think things should go... I'm getting close to finding it. Let's just say "Windows NT" and leave it there. I know for certain though that while I enjoyed the constraints of a 1-bit style, I'm going to want a few more colours for a full game.
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Hopefully the next time I'm talking about **Rumor Mill** will be revealing a game release! Until then!
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