My second game jam is in the books, and the result is The Impressionist! It’s a painting game about faking famous paintings and lifting the real ones from a museum. This reflection will be shorter than the last, as I’m busy on a larger project. Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for more.

The jam is question was Godot Wild Jam #91. I went into this one with a competitive goal in mind: I wanted to place in the top 10 games in the jam’s final rankings. There were almost 200 entries this time–a whole 50% more than GWJ #90. So the competition was tougher, but I still came just shy of this goal: 11th place. Still good, but plenty of room for improvement.

What Went Well?

• The concept has juice: This feels like a much more clever take on the theme than my last game jam, and I’m happy with how the brainstorming process went.
• The game was fun: People reported having a ton of fun with this game. Mouse painting is a good vibe, even if it’s not a very complex gameplay loop.

What Needs Work?

• Sound continues to be a problem: I tried to do some clever audio generation for the paint stroke SFX. Even after wrestling with it for several hours, I never got satisfactory results. I left those sounds in the game, tuned down to be less annoying, but I really should’ve just cut it entirely. Sound was (again) my lowest score in the rankings.

What’s next?

I’m taking several weeks this summer to make a bigger game! I want to see what I can do when given a little more time to flesh out a game, and I think some experience with bigger projects will only make me a better developer. See ya then!