I Won My First Gamejam!

6 May 2025

Hey everyone! A few weeks ago, I joined a GameJam for the first time in my life. We joined thanks to an invite from a friend of mine, and actually ended up winning first place! Let me tell you a bit about how it went.

The theme they announced was “heritage.” Since I was still on the bus and couldn’t get to the venue yet, my teammates had already started brainstorming. The idea they came up with… was pretty weird. They wanted to make a delivery game where you carry the legacies of spirits stuck in limbo. I’ve forgotten some of the details by now, but that was the general idea. I also shared some thoughts over the phone, and in the end we decided to go with this strange concept, basically, a Death Stranding like game in purgatory, lol. (And God of War’s axe? I don’t even remember where that idea came from, but it had become the main game mechanic lol)

There were five of us on the team and I was the only programmer. Also, the only one who knew how to use the game engine. PRO TIP: DO NOT JOIN A GAMEJAM WITH A TEAM LIKE THIS IF YOU LOVE YOURSELF. Because you’ll be the bottleneck. Everyone’s throwing cool assets at you to put it into the game while you’re watching “how to code enemy ai in Unity” videos. It’s stressful, exhausting, and honestly makes you feel super inadequate. That constant fear of “What if nothing gets done because of me?” really sucked. So, I’d definitely recommend joining with at least a couple of friends who can also work in the engine alongside you.

Anyway, after a brutal 48 hours, we managed to get our first (and only) build done and uploaded it to itch.io. The first impressions from people in other teams who came to play it were really positive, which felt amazing. After we uploaded the game, I had to leave the city to keep up with my studies. This sucked because I never got the chance to show our game to other people unlike my teammates. Furthermore, I wasn’t even there when they announced the winners the next day. I got a phone call saying we won the GameJam lol.

Overall, it was a great experience and I highly suggest you join GameJams, they are great! Also, if you want to check out our weird little game, I’m dropping the itch.io link below. Just remember, this was our first GameJam game, so please don’t expect too much.