@todorrobot, during Flowjam, I saw you had a sheet of paper with goals for your game on it. I’m curious as to why you would wish to do this instead of making it up as you go along.
Is it a better way?
A structured game lets you flesh out the ideas earlier so you can focus all of your effort on the game art and coding instead of wondering what you’re gonna do next or spend most of the limited time brainstorming for ideas.
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I see what you mean and why this would be appealing. I always sorta kept my ideas in my head while I brainstormed.
Hi Caden9, I could write whole essays on project organization. I plan to post a “post-mortem” breakdown of my jam process on my itch page sometime soon and I’ll tag you when I do.
But @meburningslime has it right. Anything you can do to have your to-dos in front of you as the clock is ticking helps you budget your time and differentiate between the wants, needs and the must haves when time is running out.
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I’ve been doing some engineering classes with Mark Rober and that’s how we did it. Listing issues before solutions also helps, so you can find the best possible solution. I like how he explains it:
“This graph really represents what we’re doing here. You can find a problem, find a solution, or peak on this graph (gestures dramatically), but if you brainstorm and look for all the different possible ways to tackle the problem (gestures dramatically again), then you can find the best possible solution, represented by the highest peak (another dramatic gesture), before you get stuck on a lower peak, or less effective solution. (Gestures dramatically one last time.)”
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It appears that this design process stuff is over my head.
Study time 
If you want, I have unlimited access to the Mark Rober classes. It got me from not understanding an LED completely to building my own robot! I can clip some videos (for copyright purposes) and make some short explainations.
All you really gotta do is make a list and check it twice, just like Santa.
Except don’t spy on kids when they’re sleeping
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That’s alright. Being in an engineering class myself (though I’m honestly jealous of the teacher you have), I understand the design process.
I guess I’m just confused with how you linked finding an improvement to a product to generating an entirely new idea. Could you perhaps elaborate?
Peoples ask me why I’m wasting my time on the off topic channel, and this sums it up.
Post 1: offer hundreds of hours of my time to help somebody on the internet
Post 2: dank meme
Post 2 gets likes
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Well, you want to have people invested with your game, and you want the game to feel thorough & professional. Use those two as the problems and come at it with that engineering mindset.
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That’s perfect. Thanks!
No problem. This is the game I made with that. #shamelessplug.
It’s my best yet in my opinion.
It’s actually an awesome game!
Thanks. It got 1.5 stars in last year’s flowjam ;(
That ain’t good
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Also if you beat all 3 levels, there may or may not be a secret level…
I think part of the disappointing rating you’ve received might have been in part because of the frankly overwhelming use of flashing lights. I gave it a shot and it honestly hurt my retinae to play, so fixing that would already make your game considerably better! I’d bet lowering the saturation and brightness of the colors would make things considerably more bearable. A low rating is due to a low public satisfaction. your game could become more enjoyable to people with a little more effort put into it, if you’re willing to do so, even after the jam is over. I’d love to see where you can take this game, if you want to roll up your sleeves and get a tinkering on it!
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Many people told me the exact opposite, and the people who rated mine poorly rated all but their own games poorly.