24 April, 2026
The past 7 days have been rough for little old me. It’s not politics. Or the storms in our economies. Or troubles in my family for that matter. I have been developing another game. And it’s for a game jam!
For the Thailand Summer Jam 2026, I submitted my game “Leaves in a Garden” after days and nights of hard work. Now, I want to share with you some things I learned during its development that could inspire you for your next project.
I figured that the best way to nail down the foundations of a game project is to create charts that help visualize or plan your project’s infrastructure. For example, programming-wise, most people turn to dataflow diagrams, flowcharts or pseudo-code. I used Canva, Diagrams.net and Obsidian (sometimes Excalidraw). Charts (or graphs) help you break down complex processes into “atomic” chunks that you can view on any scale.
Finding balance in your work process is key. Roughly, as a solo developer creating a small demo for a jam, I take this as a rule of thumb: 1 part planning, 2 parts prototyping, 3 parts production, 2 parts playtesting + bug-fixing and 1 part marketing. With the 1-2-3-2-1 sequence of ratios, you can apply it in your mini projects to come. Of course this is subjective. My point is for you to be aware about the proportions of the production schedule of your project!
As creatives, sometimes we do not want to always follow logic or reason to reach a particular milestone. We want to ‘feel’ our way there. During prototyping, I had been playing around a lot to get my brain working. Not making games. But making toys. A “toy” has properties that induces “fun”. By putting many toys together and watching them interact, sometimes spark ideas for a more polished feature for the game.
Alright, that’s all for this post. I hope you’ve learned something. Or at least feel mildly inspired for your next project!
You can check out my game via this link: https://lnkd.in/gzE7zUc4