#11 Things I Learnt from Making 'No Money, No Problem'
Hey, I'm back!
Play ‘No Money, No Problem’ here!
I spent the last week taking part in a Christmas Charity Game Jam. I’ve participated in two others previously with my brother - this was the first one I’ve done solo.
Here are a few things I’ve learnt about gamedev and myself in the process
1. Tools matter
Do a little bit of upfront reflection on what tools work best for the idea you have before diving right in. Don't just settle for the default. I instinctively decided I was going to make my game in Godot, because that was just what I had the most experience in.
As the game started to shape up into a Pokemon style top-down game, I was spending a lot of time programming in basic mechanics like movement and interactions in the style of old gameboy games.
Luckily, I saw an errant post on bluesky about GB Studio over lunch on the second day, and after tinkering around with it for a couple of hours it seemed like the right choice to lean hard into the aesthetic and rebuild my game from the ground up there! Thankfully it was just 1.5 days into the jam so there wasn’t too much to re-do.
2. Diversity leads to more interesting stories
This was perhaps the biggest thing I learnt this time around - don't settle for tropes. It'll lead you down more interesting and unique paths.
Originally my main character was to be a generic male human as it seemed like the obvious ‘default’ choice to me - but then early on in the jam it bothered me that everyone would have to play as a male. So I considered implementing a short character select screen in the beginning where you could choose between male and female presenting characters for the duration of the game - but that felt pretty binary.
The solution presented itself when I found character sprites of an alien, and I decided the character should be someone everyone can relate to the same amount. The rest of the story started to fall in place in a much more unique and interesting manner than my original idea - leading to the whole idea of returning home, plus the whole ending!
3. The order of your if-statements matters
This is SUPER basic - but I couldn't figure out how to make a dialog change after a first interaction. I was updating a variable to track how many times the player had interacted with an NPC, and choosing which dialog to present based on that variable.
e.g. NPC1 = 0 for first interaction, at the end of which would update variable NPC1 to 1, and so on.
The problem I was facing was that after interaction 1, interaction 2 would immediately play and i couldn't figure out why! Luckily someone had made a YouTube video explaining why this was happening and how to solve it.
The solution is pretty simple - to simply place the check for NPC1 = 1 before NPC1 = 0, so that you wouldn't go past it after running through ‘if NPC1 = 0’! Pretty basic stuff, but that made a lot of sense and is something I won't forget.
4. An advantage of working solo…
is that you can modify and trim your idea at the speed of thought, without having to check with anyone. Kept me in the flow for longer.
Disadvantages are that it's very easy for you to make meandering and difficult games that only make sense to you, which is why you SHOULD...
5. Playtest your game!
Halfway through the jam I took my game to a local playtest party here in Bristol and got to watch a bunch of complete strangers play my game and critique it! Incredibly useful and satisfying.
I learnt that I hated when people didn't know the controls (entirely my fault) - so I made sure that the build I submitted in the game required the player to go through them before moving on. I think I’ll build that into every game I make in the future. Relying on people reading the itch.io description isn’t enough!
6. Simplicity leads to easier polish (or at least the impression of such.)
Another thing that I picked up from the playtest party - a few people commented on how 'polished' the game felt. This surprised me! I think this was less to do with the amount of actual work I put into it, and more into the inherent nature of developing retro games - people tend to be more forgiving, because they tap into the gestalt of that style. The nostalgia helps too.
Anyway - the more layers you add into a game, the more complicated the systems are, the more there is to polish; and polish goes a long way to making a game 'feel' like an entity that can stand on its own. Basically, its far easier to polish a short limited GameBoy game than a AAA 3D game.
Now that I've written it out it seems terribly obvious, but perhaps something to remember when it comes to choosing the kind of game you'll make for a jam, given the time you have. Restrictions are frustrating to begin with, but they pay out dividends in spades as you embrace them.
7. I like writing for games
Writing for this game came fairly quickly to me!
Fallout New Vegas was/is a massive game for me and I realise now that a big part of why I love that game so much is the writing. Also, writing can be its own reward. Especially if you manage to make the player earn it, and especially in a small game like this.
8. I need to learn to design better game thumbnails
Self explanatory, but every time it comes to the last hour of the game jam and I struggle to come up with anything, so I rehash the main menu of the game. I need to spend some time studying other successful thumbnails!
Same with writing copy for the description. It’s not something that should be put off, and I want to experiment considering the ‘end’ stage work right at the beginning, when coming up with the idea in the first place.
INGEST
Donate to the jingle jam! A great way to donate money to charity while picking up a bunch of quality games.
I picked up UFO50 and Disco Elysium recently. Both excellent, top level games and they definitely had an influence on the route I took for this game jam.
I last wrote on here almost exactly a year ago to this day! It’s been a fun, interesting, busy, BUSY year. I might write more in the new year, but I’ve decided to give bluesky the majority of my public-facing attention from now on, so follow along there!
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and have an excellent 2025!