We all need a little bit of madness in our lives. It helps us to get out of our comfort zone, have fun, learn new things, and ultimately decide whether or not it was worth it.

In this case, the madness was participating in my first game jam since I began my journey to become a game developer almost a year ago.

I was a little bit scared/embarrassed/lazy to sign up, but since I’m now working with the great team at Tentativo Studios, I told myself I was going to propose participating in the MermaladaJam2 and see what happened. And it happened.

The Game Jam process

A team of 5 people got together on a Friday at 8:00 PM as soon as the theme and ingredients were published (I’ll explain this later) to start brainstorming. We only had 72 hours ahead of us and all we knew was that we wanted to do something simple.

The Theme and Ingredients

It never goes as planned. Simple it was not. From the first moment, we started to go crazy, especially me. I have experience in projects, but when it comes to games I go crazy, my inner child comes out and I lose my mind. I wanted to make a great game. And to win first place.

MermeladaJam 2 came with a theme (typical of game jams) that we didn’t know until the start and with 9 possible ingredients that you could choose from in rows, columns and diagonals. Like a bingo. Or all of them if you wanted.

In our case, in addition to the main theme “Forever”, we chose “A Room”, “Coins” and “Hiding Places”.

The normal thing would have been to think about the main theme and once you have an idea, choose the ingredients. That’s what my colleagues did. I like to go against the grain and I saw more sense in choosing the row that was most interesting for simplicity (we didn’t want something simple?) and then adding the main theme with glue or a shoehorn.

I immediately saw it clearly, coins… hidden… in a room. Obvious, right? And the forever? I don’t know if it’s because I recently saw Aquaman. Or because there are a lot of pirates in the Felix cartoons. But I said, okay, cursed pirates for stealing treasure, ghosts, forever… the raw idea started to appeal to the rest and it was defined.

The game

A long time ago, pirates stole a cursed treasure. The curse sank their ship and they were trapped forever. The coins of the cursed treasure are scattered around the room (the inside of a ship) in various hiding places. This is Dead men do tell tales.

From there, the team worked together to define the basic mechanics, number of coins, hiding places, crew, basic texts, UI… and get to work. A team of 5 people: 1 developer + Unity, 2 3D modelers, 1 2D artist and sound. Lots of messages in discord, lots of meetings… crazy weekend.

The Results

In short, we worked a lot (too much) to the point where I got a backache. But the result is worth it, being a short but complete and very well-achieved game.

I don’t know what position we will get in the MermeladaJam 2 but, regardless, I am very happy. First, for having been able to work as a team without any clashes. Second, for having made such a good game in such a short time. This means that my learning of Unity and other areas is paying off. And third… I have already broken the game jam barrier and I have another game for my portfolio.

I want to write a post only about the game at a more technical level. It will come soon. In the meantime you can play Dead men do tell tales here: