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What My First Game Jam Taught Me About Finishing

· 3 min read
Yisi Liu
Yisi Liu
Game Developer

48 hours. One theme revealed at the start. You build something. You ship it.

My first game jam was in early 2024. Here's what I learned — most of it the hard way.

Hour 1–4: Overscoping​

The theme dropped: "One Room."

My first idea: a mystery game where the player explores a single room across different time periods, past and future versions overlapping. Dialogue system. Multiple endings. Inventory. 48 hours.

I started building the dialogue system.

Two hours in, a friend looked at my project and said: "Can you finish that in 46 hours?"

I couldn't. I scrapped it.

Hour 4–12: Finding the Actual Scope​

I made myself answer three questions:

  1. What is the one thing the player does?
  2. What does done look like?
  3. Can I build that in 36 hours?

New idea: a single-screen puzzle where the player moves a box around a room to reach a door. Simple. Clearly scoped. Done = puzzle solved, fade to credits.

I started building it.

Hour 12–36: Building Under Constraint​

No polish until core is working. No effects until the mechanic works. No music until I can complete the puzzle.

This felt wrong. I'm used to iterating on feel as I go. But under a deadline, working ugly beats pretty-but-broken.

By hour 24, the puzzle was completable. The box moved, the physics felt okay, you could reach the door and win.

Hour 36–48: The Finish Line​

Polish. Music (a free CC0 track). Sound effects. Title screen. "You Win" screen. Build it. Upload it.

I submitted with 20 minutes to spare. The game had 8 levels and took about 12 minutes to complete.

What I Learned​

Finishing is a skill. It sounds obvious but I hadn't practiced it. Every project before the jam had always been "in progress." The jam forced me to make the hard call: this is what ships, everything else is cut.

Scope is a prediction. You don't know if something fits until you try. The dialogue system felt totally reasonable until the clock made it concrete. Now when I plan projects, I ask: can I build the core mechanic in one weekend? If not, the design is probably too complex for the time I have.

The game doesn't have to be good — it has to be done. My jam game is not impressive. The puzzles are easy and the graphics are programmer art. But it's a finished thing that exists in the world, and that feels completely different from an unfinished project that exists only on my hard drive.

I've done two more jams since. Each time, I scope smaller than I think I should, and each time I'm glad I did.

Yisi Liu — learning to ship, one game at a time.