So you’ve decided to join a game jam. Awesome! If this is your first game jam, or your tenth you will still want to be prepared for it. Being prepared will make things go smoother, and will keep you focused on making the game!
I’ve been to dozens of game jams, being prepared is the first step to a successful game jam. It helps to be over-prepared, because your other team members may not be as prepared as you..
Always remember, anything that can go wrong will go horribly wrong during a game jam. I’ve seen windows updates take 6 hours, I’ve seen hard drives die in the beginning, I’ve seen computers not allow you to install Unity, I’ve seen combos of snow storms and dead batteries. All during game jams.
I hope that this prep list will help your game jam go smoothly and awesomely. Good luck and remember to have fun.
Hardware
- Extra Batteries (all kinds, check your mouse, your keyboard, etc etc)
- Snacks
- Doing a snack run costs precious time, have food before hand.
- Healthy snacks will likely keep your energy up (sugary ones give you crashes)
- Whiteboard
- Double check your gamejam location to see if these are available already
- Markers and erasers
- Even if the location has markers, expect them to be worn out.
- Redundancy
- Every piece of hardware you have, have a backup for when that fails.
- Ex: Extra mouse
- Ex: Extra laptop (if you can afford that)
- Ex: Extra VR headset
- Every piece of hardware you have, have a backup for when that fails.
- Video cables
- Bring a bunch, random assortment. You’ll thank yourself during the jam.
- Brainstorming Tools
- Pens, pencils, paper, graph paper, dice, coins, playing cards.
- Your best books (only bring 1-3)
- These should be books with material that isn’t easy to google. Like AI stuff, design things, and crazy math formulas.
- Business cards
- You’re going to meet new people, never forget your business cards!
- Game Related Hardware
- Who knows what kind of game you’ll make? Bring controllers and tablets and spare smart phones!
Software
- Turn OFF windows updates. Just for a few days.
- The last thing you want is a loading bar that takes 20+ minutes
- Or worse, an update with a memory leak (yes, those happen)
- Make sure you have enough hard drive space, it sucks running out in the heat of the moment
- http://diskspacefan.com/index.html helps out a ton
- Get source control ready before hand
- Have an empty source control repo up and running.
- If your team has used source control before, they can kick a lot more butt, and many people can learn in the jam if they want.
- Organize your jump drive with game jam vs non game jam folders
- Game Jam
- Not Game Jam
- Have a collection of general art
- Generic shapes, generic biped characters, prototype images
- Have your editor up to date
- Unity, Unreal, etc
- Pick a version number, STICK WITH IT!
- If that engine updates during the game jam, don’t falter
- Have extra install exe’s for your partners who won’t have their editor up to date
People
If your jam allows it, bring a team. Be willing to have more people join your team (meeting new people is part of the fun of a game jam).
It also helps to remind them EVERY day for 2 weeks before the game jam, to let them know that you are super psyched about this (and so they don’t forget).
And remember, your team is always willing to learn new things (its a common game dev trait) so be ready to teach some stuff as well as learn new things.