Welcome to WIZARD JAM

[gerbilsinspace]

I've posted my game. If I want to continue my devlog on the game, should I continue updating here even though the work for the Jam is over, or should I move over to the game dev sub forum?

[Dinosaursssssss]

Just under 12 hours left! A few things you might have forgotten:

Do you have instructions or a tutorial? (This is important! People looking through jam games are very quick to dismiss things they can't figure out)

Did you say "oh I donno, I'll make some music and effects next week" a week ago then forget about it?

Have you tested your game? Consider stopping work a couple hours in advance of the end, and play through it end to end to make sure everything's A-OK. Code freeze that release candidate early so you have time to fix any blocker bugs.

If your game is an executable, can you quit it? (By default in Unity, games built for PC have no quit button other than Alt-F4)

[Jake]

Also don't forget to actually submit your game to the itch.io page linked in the first post!

[Dinosaursssssss]

Some other tips:

- Do you have a product marketing strategy? Be sure to know your target demographic to get the most out of your ad spend.

- Have you built a press kit and assembled a list of publications and journalists to distribute your game and kit to? Have you generated all the Steam or other platform keys you'll need?

- Make sure any important iconography and proper nouns are properly trademarked before release.

- Have you purchased all relevant URLs for your game? Make sure to get out ahead of domain squatters by purchasing URLs for any potential sequels.

- For launch day, be sure to have members from relevant teams available to test and deploy hotfixes. Make sure your support team is aware of the launch and will have staff on hand to respond to customers 24 hours a day after launch, until things settle down.

- Do you have a list of potential day one issues? Have a QA manager compile a list of potential issues, and where possible, provide fixes that in-game support can handle on the fly.

 

Congratulations! You're ready to release your first game: http://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam

[Spenny]

Protip: Synergy

[WilloughbyJackson]

My game works..somehow 

 

But in all seriousness, I'm just happy to finish this thing.  Not sure if I ever considered marketing the game or anything like that...

[Ben X]

It would be handy if everyone changed their [DEVLOG} title to [RELEASE] (or similar) once they've uploaded their game - nice to see them all pop up, and then interesting to see at a glance how many got finished in time.

[z_bill]

My game is out! http://z-bill.itch.io/pause-screen-from-battletoads

 

So happy and exhausted. I got it on the itch.io jam page. There's nothing else to do here right?

 

You guys all rule.

[SouperMatty]

So I stuffed up - I went to upload to itchio at the last minute and my bandwidth was too slow... missed the submission by seconds. Srsly... less than a minute.

 

Is there any way I can get my submission into the jam somehow? Really really bummed out about this.

http://soupermatty.itch.io/cyberpunk-carp-killer

[Ganz]

So I stuffed up - I went to upload to itchio at the last minute and my bandwidth was too slow... missed the submission by seconds. Srsly... less than a minute.

 

Is there any way I can get my submission into the jam somehow? Really really bummed out about this.

http://soupermatty.itch.io/cyberpunk-carp-killer

I was just a handful of minutes away from missing the deadline, myself. Scary stuff. Since this jam isn't "competitive" and you and your game are here, I don't see a reason for you to be excluded!

[Ben X]

I bet Dinosaursssssss and Spenny will allow you to sneak in. That would get us up to 35 games, so impressive! Well done everyone, including those who didn't manage to finish this time - you've given yourself a bit more experience for the next one!

[Synnah]

The last two-and-a-bit weeks have been a lot of fun! Thanks to Dinosaursssssss and Spenny for organising everything, and to everyone who made anything for creating a load of totally rad stuff! I wanted to play the games that were submitted early and give feedback, but I left everything so late that I didn't have time. I'm going to play everything tonight! Also need to write up a mini-post mortem for my game, and make a list of the features I still want to implement.

[zerofiftyone]

Yeah I'd like to echo that sentiment. The past two weeks have been a blast, and I feel a whole lot more involved and at home with the Thumbs community than I did going in. You guys are awesome. I hope we do another one of these real soon.

[dibs]

You guys are amazeballs.

[fierydrake]

I have to agree with you Synnah/zerofiftyone, this was the only online game jam I've done (or even been able to do) and that I submitted something is due mostly to the great feel and buzz around the jam. I don't have a lot of spare time (kids and job) and the timetable of 2 weeks and the chilled vibe really helped to make this workable; it was nice to see other people in the same boat also able to have a go. The supportiveness of everyone to each other has been really great to see!

 

I really hope we can do it again, maybe next year?

 

Looking forward to a break, then to play through all the games from the smallest unfinished gem to the most polished. Thanks folks!

[maxwellyoung]

There should definitely be a Twitch stream of the thumbs crew playing the games. 

[coughlinjon]

Submitted my game 3 minutes before the deadline, yay! It doesn't even have an end state and is barely a playable thing, but it's also the first Unity project I've felt comfortable enough sharing

 

This was an awesome experience - a great two weeks. It was my first time browsing the Idle Thumbs forums and I found answers to questions, collaborators, general enthusiasm and support. 

 

Thanks to everyone who made this environment so welcoming

[Deadpan]

Congratulations everyone! This has been a lot of fun and even pretty productive, even playing to lose as I did, with paper deadlines and A MAZE smack in the middle of everything.

[Dinosaursssssss]

Anyone who missed the deadline by a little bit, PM me the url of your game on itch.io and I can send you a link to add it.

 

This was a lot of fun, thank you everyone for joining in! Congratulations to everyone who made something, finished or not, and I salute the folks who made a game for the first time. Everyone's been really helpful and positive throughout the past couple weeks and it's been a pleasure jamming with you all. This is a really encouraging and supportive community and it was awesome to see that positivity in all the dev log threads, irc, and twitter throughout the jam. This was a complete success as far as I can see, and there's definitely interest, so I'd love to do it again next year.

 

In the mean time, fellow reader/forum-er Gritfish's jam, the Public Domain jam is coming up in a couple weeks, and I highly encourage you to check out other jams like Ludum Dare and 7DFPS, and to come hang out in the game development forum and make games with us there!

 

Thank you again to everyone who participated (and everyone who participates now by playing stuff!), to the Thumbs for encouraging this weird thing, to Spenny for helping me admin the itch page, and especially to everyone who helped other folks out the past couple weeks!

 

And now I'm off to spend the rest of the day playing through your games.

 

edit: And thank you to Coods for making the banner!!!

[WilloughbyJackson]

I'd also like to thank Dinosaursssssss and Spenny for organizing the jam.  Besides the point in time when Unity was corrupting all my 2D Canvas and making me reanimate stuff over and over again...it was a lot of fun....

[nkornek]

Super huge thanks to Dinosaursssssss and Spenny for organizing this! Definitely the most fun online jam I've ever done. The sense of community was really amazing.

[Spenny]

Man, all I did was get excited, and try to get others excited too, Dino did most of the organizing, and more importantly THE COMMUNITY deserves the most thanks, because it would have been nothing without their participation! 

[Old News Belida]

Yeah this was great! Super motivating having actually *finished* something. Hopefully can carry this momentum into SlumpBots, another tabletop game I was making as a break from the BIGGER tabletop game I'm working on.

 

fff

[Dinosaursssssss]

Allright I'm just a little over halfway through playing everything, I swear this weekend I'm gonna finish getting through them all. Playing Idle Clickers got me back into idle games so I've been distracted.

[Vainamoinen]

Never made a game? No idea what engine to use? Check out Sortingh.at by Zoe Quinn for figuring out what tools to use.

 

Zoë's made a companion site for that one!

http://www.gamesareforeveryone.com/