It has been a long while since I made a game for a jam, my old hard drive got fried and I lost all the project files for the other game jam projects I made before, including a bunch of work updating those projects that I hadn't yet released, so it is just gone. That made me take a break from it for a while, but I'm back at it with this game jam. I had the basic idea for this jam right away of a game in the style of Paper Mario but with the plot of Lion King. The story has expanded a lot since then, but I do intend it to be an homage to Paper Mario, but with more of a medieval fantasy feel. Dragon Hunters is a really fun concept, and it was engaging to design the ideas around it, but the execution was lacking on this game jam edition, and I learned a lot from that. 

As always, time management is a struggle for me, but this time I broke down the idea into chunks and set aside time to work on each of them, which was very helpful in keeping things organized and on track with planning, but the estimations were all wrong. Thanks ADHD.  That combined with a classic case of overprep and underdeliver really crippled my progress on this jam. So, for example, I have plans for 8 different zones, but only one actually mapped out. I have an entire database of enemies for the first four zones, but no actual implementation of those fights yet, I have made 8 potential party members and none of them are able to be acquired yet. In past projects, I made a beginning cutscene or scenario first and created the game chronologically as I went; this never resulted in a finished game jam project and I always planned to go back and figure out the ending, but never had the plot planned out to excite me and draw me back in. I saw that as a potential design flaw in my process, so this time, I planned everything from start to finish before even starting to work on it, I have all the story figured out from the beginning to the end of the game. Unfortunately, that took longer than anticipated so I had much less time to implement those ideas, so most of it is not actually in the uploaded project, which is a bummer and as a result, this is my weakest game jam submission I think I have made so far... On the flip side, this game jam submission is the most well-crafted framework I have made so far, even if that framework is bare and empty. That combined with the fact that since I lost all the old files, this is my only project I have now that I can work on, means that I should have a very easy time of taking this game all the way to the designed end. This might be the first project I finish fully, so I am committing to writing devlogs for it each time I update it and with the database mostly made and the plot outlined, all I have to do is make maps and create characters and fill in the gaps. I plan to try to make the maps of a zone one week, and fill that zone with events and people and story and enemies the next week. Repeating that should get two zones made a month and the first full version of the game should be done by end of year even if I have some chronological challenges.

Optimistic and hopeful that this project stays fun and engaging, and that I can finish it this year. Hopefully it won't drag-on... hunters...