We had 4 days to make a game.
Here’s how it went.
The Challenge:
In the spring of 2025, I and seven other talented creatives came together to create a game for the Girly Game Jam. From the initial conceptualization to the finish line, I was responsible for facilitating communications between team members, ensuring appropriate work deadlines, monitoring the project’s scope, and advising the team. In this short period of time, I was able to become familiar with each team member’s strengths, and tailored development resource plans around their needs to ensure the completion of work before the deadline.
The Team:
Kathryn Johnston - Production Coordinator, UI
BytesTea: Programming and Art
WaffleFish: Programming
Zarra: Programming
Lewiwii: Programming
Soup: Character Art
Aleksis: Composing
Jade: Composing and Sound Design
Pre-Production
Before the start of the jam, I connected with teammates to become familiar with everyone’s unique skill sets and roles. I also sent out a capacity plan for team members to fill out, so we would know how much time each person was looking to contribute.
While the team discussed ideas, I set up two documents detailing the game’s style, mechanics, and features. These sheets consolidated the information communicated by the team and would make for helpful references going forwards.
Plans were made in Trello.
After convening with each development group, I wrote up the team’s task schedule in a shared Trello board. It was important to block out the timeframe so that the team would be ready to start developing the game and creating polished assets immediately.
Working With the Team
Due to a sudden change circumstances, two developers found themselves unable to work as much as they would have liked on the second day.
To alleviate this problem, I took on designing UI assets, allowing a multitasking programmer, Bytes, to focus more on developing the game’s framework.
Programming
Due to some sudden llife events, key responsive interactions were not able to be implemented. They appreciated feedback on task prioritization and advice to cut certain features, to keep the scope reasonable.
Art
The sprites took significantly more time than they expected, so they were glad adequate time was scheduled to account for it. They found the ideation phase in pre-production to be valuable. Without a brainstorming phase, the amount of art resources available at the end of the jam might have been lower.
Music
Because of the change of scope to focus on polishing one level over making multiple, and the removal of a tutorial, some musical assets were not used. This lead to some disappointment in the team. Music team members also found having a pre-jam conceptualization phase helpful as it left time for gathering inspiration from art and game concepts.
Team Reviews
Following the conclusion of the jam, I followed up with my team members to see how they felt about the production process, and gather feedback on what they thought was helpful.