This was written a few days before the gamedev.js 2026 jam’s theme was revealed. By now the jam is over but I will publish this for the sake of history. Did I participate? How did it go? Those questions will receive answers in the next post! This is all about the preparation.
How is a a busy person supposed to participate in a game jam? Apparently the answer is by having a plan. I am not a huge fan of plans, but needs must. So here goes.
The jam runs for 13 days. I think it is wise to assume that I will have, at most, about 30 minutes of keyboard time in each day. This means that I will have 13 x 30 minutes, which is 6 hours and 30 minutes. I shall consider this my time budget.
I will have more time than that for planning as I can plan whenever I am driving to work, walking to lunch, having lunch, generally daydreaming, etc. This planning likely wont be as fruitful since it will be generally scattered and I wont always be able to make notes, but I’ll try and do my best.
For my tools, I have this strange desire to use Kaplay. I want to use something that runs in the browser and I have been tempted to use Kaplay for some time. So here goes!
For assets I will probably use Procreate of Figma. Procreate I will have to use on my iPad which I don’t always have available. Figma runs OK-ish on my laptop which I can make available more often.
For sounds, I might use an asset pack from Kenney or try and cook something up in Pico 8. We’ll see. I will probably leave the sounds for last.
I also want to try something new. I stumbled upon the Playwright docs and saw that they have some AI integration. I might try and use Playwright to test the game. Testing with these game development libraries has usually been quite a pain to set up, so perhaps this fully visual way of testing will be easier. Lets see!
Finally, the game will be published on itch. I wont attempt any extras challenges apart from open source since I would do that anyway.
I think I will keep my AI use to a minimum. I dislike using it for assets, but for coding, its practically impossible to avoid (even googling is technically using AI as it always attempts to provide some synthesis). I might use it for vibe coding some tests as that is more of a chore than a creative pursuit, at least for this small project.
Now I just need the theme which will hopefully be revelaed tomorrow! Lets see!
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