Firstly, it was a great experience to try participating in the game jam for the first time. I've known about the competition since Game Jam 4. At the time, I hadn't made an account yet - however, I thought it would be great to take part it one of those one day. At Game Jam 5, I was surprised at how the quality of the games improved so much. In fact, in my opinion, game jams are being harder and harder to win because the entries are getting better each time.

Before the Jam started, I didn't sign up because I feared that I would be hurting the artists who would otherwise have won because of my bad programming skills. However, after reading Tom's post encouraging people to make games anyway, I thought, 'why not? There's no pressure of winning this way.' That's how I sat down and started making 'burn versus freeze' with terrible graphics. On the second day, I asked Clatform if he wanted to join as he had posted in the forum. He agreed, and somehow, he managed to make most of the graphics in a mere five hours! After I finished all the programming, he polished the graphics. I published the game after a few bug fixes.

Looking back, I think the bad AI was the most fatal mistake I'd made. At first, I wanted to save the AI till last. However, I later realised that if I made the AI too smart, some of the earlier levels might become too difficult or even impossible. Plus, I did not have much time to make a better AI. Another thing was the lack of 'juice'. I know I'm supposed to have watched the video before the jam, but I didn't! I probably wouldn't have too much time for 'juice' anyway, so I was quite amazed that a lot of the entries from the pros did have quite large amounts of 'juice'! There was certainly more 'juice' this jam than any other previous jams. (That gets me thinking! Maybe jam manufacturers make jam using juice?)

Excuse my bad pun. Anyway, it was fun reading the reviews, although it was a little less fun to watch the score go from 3.35 to 2.90! I think most of the reviews can quite reflect what I did wrong and handled poorly, although there was one thing I find quite bizarre: one reviewer thought there was no mute button, and another thought there was no music! There's nothing strange about either case - my mute button was pretty hidden and was only available in the menu screen, and speakers are often unreliable - but when both happen, it's just funny! :D

On to my opinions on the game jam in general. In my opinion, MintPaw's Slime's Cake Quest was the best game in the jam. The concept was the most creative and the core mechanic was very well reflected. It also had quite a bit of 'juice'! The one about zombies was great, too. It was the 'juiciest' one. In my opinion, 'Uddercover''s concept was slightly less creative than the two mentioned above, but its voice acting made it hard to resist a 5/5!

I plan to work on my AI after 'Land of Towers'. I'll be making a very simple game with a rather clever AI. Oh, and I want to practice listeners then! I've read about listeners, but I've never used them before. After that, maybe I will rebuild Galactic Symbols... with listeners!