At 2 am on Sunday, February 26th, the third game jam I participated in over the last month officially closed for submissions. And a day has passed since the results were announced; The highest placement I achieved in one of the four categories was 42nd. Of the final 154 submissions, I was able to take my place in the upper third of all the talented developers who participated alongside me.

Even though I was only made aware of the game jam at the halfway point, I could still pull something together and submit a game I am reasonably proud of. It is certainly not a perfect game; it might not even be that fun. But the most crucial aspect was that I finished it and submitted it on time, despite all my disadvantages.

All the feedback I received was fair, and I was already very much aware of the issues presented to me in the comments. But I am happy people were engaged enough to play my creation, even if it was just for a few minutes.

The well-known YouTube Streamer Ludwig hosted the jam, and this year’s installment theme was his cat, “Coots.” I immediately felt lost. The theme was vast, and I needed to make it easier to conceive a good idea and coupled that with the limited available time. I quickly decided to keep the scope of this game small, even for a game jam.

I decided upon a mini-game format where you take the role of his cat and are set up to create chaos for Ludwig in a small set of different mini-games. I heavily went with the more general cat theme and focused on highly stereotypical cat behaviors as the central mechanics for each mini-game. i.e., pushing stuff onto the ground, walking over keyboards, and pulling on cables.

The game is not a masterwork. Not even close, but it is complete; if you want to play it for yourself, you can find it on my itch.io page. The game can be played entirely within the browser; no downloads are required.

Game jams are extremely valuable exercises and experiences I have highly. Over the coming year, I will participate in more jams and release many more games. A video dev log on the game’s development will be released on my youtube channel within the coming weeks, and I hope to see you there soon.