Making this little game has honestly been quite the ride. 

Creating this little game marks a lot of 'firsts' for me. First time making a game as a solodev, first time making music, first time making a hidden objects game (and using renpy to do it too) and first time making an entire playable game in under 1 week. To be honest, before this, I had been a little doubtful about making a game alone. I've been working as a game artist for a while now, and I've always made games in a team. Despite knowing some coding and design, trying to make a game alone had sounded very scary and intimidating, possibly because me and my team have been making way bigger games. I suppose that skewed my perspective of how creating games would be, and that I'd always need more people. Not to mention how I felt like I don't have enough experience in both programming, writing and design to be able to make something alone. 

And then of course, this jam happened. 

I had initially planned to go with a team, however with my incredibly limited availability (only being able to join halfway through the jam, not to mention being unavailable on the last day) I felt bad if I were to drag the team down. I wasn't sure I'd join the jam at all, but at some point ,I found a game idea that I could not get out of my head that fit perfectly with the theme, and so I decided to go solo, for the first time in my entire game dev journey. I thought it would be fine if I didn't do spectacularly, it's not a competitive jam after all.

After all is said and done, here are some of my major takeaways from this experience:

Especially for game jams, planning and scheduling is key

1. Despite only working on the actual game for 3 days, I spent about 2-3 days before just thinking about what I was going to make and how much time I should allocate for each part. I ended up dedicating 1 whole day just setting up the programming for the hidden objects gameplay and writing, and spent the rest of it just drawing and implementing the artworks.
2. Sometimes, you just need to call it a day even if you're not happy with the result. I think I was running out of time when working on the grocery store scene. You can probably tell it looked a lot rougher than the other scenes but I decided to just let it go because I still needed to make the last stage.
3. Reuse assets when you can. I don't know if anyone noticed but the forest scene and the park scene has the exact same layout and character. I was running low on time then, so I decided to reuse the character and composition for the forest scene.
4. It's ok to cut down. I had initially planned to have 15 items in each stage (but only 9 will be used in the hidden objects game, which will be randomized to allow for some replaying) but when I got to the last stage, I only put in 11. It's probably fine though, I don't think this game has a high replayability in the first place so I just left it as it is. Another thing I ended up cutting down on is the UI. I basically ended up just.... reskinning the original renpy UI (just the main menu, really) because I figured most people would play this in one sitting, I figured people still wouldn't really mind seeing the basic UI too since it's quite clear and user-friendly as well so I prioritized other things before the UI.

Be Flexible with changes and playtest as often as you can

1. Test mechanics early. There's a reason i spent the entirety of the first day just getting the game going, even with just blocks or empty images. I feel that in general, people tend to leave testing mechanics pretty late into production and that gives you way less flexibility to change things. Get your main mechanic functional asap even without the proper art or anything, just make sure it works. And if it doesn't, at least you have plenty of time to make a new one.
2. Things will break at some point before your final build. Always keep backups. And you know what? it's fine to leave in bugs as long as it isn't game breaking. I had some problem with the hitbox of certain objects and I just decided to leave as is haha. (They're still clickable, but a little annoying) But yeah, sometimes bugs can be game breaking, and I guess that's when you gotta make choices. do you spend more time fixing? make from scratch? make a new (but similar) mechanic? I actually rewrote the code a couple of times during the entire process before i got something that works well enough haha
3. Get someone to playtest as you go (aside from yourself) it helps. A lot. when I worked on the game I started getting pretty sick of it and finding the objects became easier with each gameplay bc I remembered where i put them. Ended up getting my friends to try and play through it a couple of times and they did a good job telling me what worked and what didn't, game feedback on my writing too, and they were also the one who suggested to add the last scene just because the text leading to the end was too long. Seriously, test often and with as many people as you can. Sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eye to tell you what's working and what's not working. (though of course, it's your call whether or not to implement something .sometimes you just have no time to make changes and that's ok. it's a game jam after all TT_TT)

You can do more things than you think. 

1. Scope as low as you can go. Initially, I had only planned to have 1 hidden objects scene, but as I was somewhat ahead of schedule, I decided to add a couple more, one at a time and adjusted my schedule accordingly. (Although maybe I should have just settled on a cutscene for the last hidden objects part, a 4th stage ended up being a bit much for the timeframe i think) But yeah, It's definitely much much easier to scale up than to scale down.
2. Use what you already know in creative ways. I actually thought of making a hidden objects game because i figure i could just, make the objects buttons that you can click. I don't have a lot of programming knowledge but i do know how to do little things like that.
3. Play on your strengths. I personally know that I am best with art, so I tried to make a game that relied heavily on art. 
4. It's OK to experiment a little! As I've said, this game was.... a lot of firsts for me. I ended up dedicating a few hours just making music (not just because i felt bad using other people's works without proper compensation but also) because I know a little bit of music and I know I can. It's not the best piece of music ever but it got the job done I guess, and I had fun experimenting with audio programs which was very interesting. I had also initially thought of just making a short VN but somewhere along the way i realized.... I could maybe make something more? with what I already know? and that sounded like a lot of fun so I kinda went for it.

Anyway, After all in said and done, I think I'm quite happy with how things turned out, and working as a solo dev isn't as terrifying as I have made it out to be. I do think I could have planned things out a little better especially regarding the design of the game, such as what items are going to be hidden and how many stages/how to space each stage in the dialogue haha. (maybe this is how I'm getting into the spreadsheet craze I see most game devs I know go through?) I do want to make more games, whether alone or with other people. I personally still prefer having other people working with me, but at least I know that I can make something myself and still enjoy the process all the same.