What I was able to accomplish in a week

Not much in all honesty

 I gave myself a week to get something out that was playable. Starting with the concept of a traditional bullet hell that transitions into a platformer when your ship takes too much damage, I realized that I had to scrap the platforming nearly instantly. I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to create the system to swap between two game modes in a week while also working on everything else I had to do. So all that came out of it was a basic shmup with no gimmick or anything really, just the base of a game almost, **but** it's playable and beatable.

Why tho?

So, I decided to do what I've been thinking of as my own personal game jam for a few reasons. First off was that I was stuck feeling like I wasn't making any progress on anything I was doing for months. There was nothing I could show anyone from any of the work I'd put into learning. I knew how to build systems and troubleshoot and whatnot but got stuck in a loop of trying to perfect everything, constantly changing every aspect of little things, and never getting around to the “make something playable” aspect of game development. I needed something to break me out of that. This did the job pretty well I'd say.

The second reason that I chose to do this, and not join a jam, was that I just personally hate how most of them you don't know the theme until the day of the jam. Look, I'm not the most creative person in the world. It takes me a while to come up with ideas and concepts (not to mention how long it takes to make art/assets with my 5th grader-esque ability). I've completed one in the past and another I had to quit. I didn't want that anxiety on this project. So this time I opted to just do it on my own and, surprisingly, setting my own deadline worked pretty well. I did go over it by 2 days, but meh. I'm not saying game jams are bad or anything, in fact I'll probably try one here soon to see how it goes. What I *am* saying though is that you don't have to do one if you don't want. If you have anxiety about participating in one, just set your own deadline and stick to it and if you go over your deadline don't beat yourself up, just keep plowing forward.

Lastly, I just wanted to see where my ability was at. It was slightly higher than I thought, but lower than I'd like to be. I *was* able to get a small working demo out in about a week from scratch. I *wasn't* able to do so many things I would've liked to in that time frame such as: add sound of any kind, apply shaders and particles, implement a power-up system, and of course the big thing, the original idea, a second game mode. That taught me that I should really be delaying implementation of features and extras more than I do. There's no point in having a flashy game with a million features if you can't play the game.

I'd say overall it was a good experience. Not nearly the “I've worked on this for 2 hours, what do y'all think?” \*Shows Skyrim screenshot\* type of post I see about 1/4th of the time online, but I feel like I've learned a decent bit. For example, to not just beat my head against a problem until I get through it. Stepping away for a break and coming back works much better (still hard to do that though since I tend to hyperfocus on the issue, but I'm working on it). I also realized that a signal bus singleton would be a great thing to have lying around. No idea why I never slapped one into a project before. It's so helpful and prevents so much spaghettification in your code.

<Insert Jazzy Outro Music Here>

That's about it. I could go on more about this past week, but I'm sure you value your time and I don't want to bore you.

I'll probably be working on it more intermittently. I would love decent art and to carry through with the original idea, possibly, but we'll see how things go. Might end up chasing after the next shiny new idea that pops in my head instead.

If I didn't bore you *and* for some reason you actually want to hear more of my thrilling adventures, then follow me on Bluesky @vonrage.bsky.social.

TL;DR

Made a game (demo) in about a week. Taught me a few things, such as: Cut features until you have a working prototype. Take breaks when you can't solve something. Signal buses are awesome. If you want to do a game jam, but the idea makes you too anxious, do it yourself. You're awesome, don't give up!