Why have I not done more game jams in the past? I recently just finished my first game jam, and I got lucky that I was with a group of talented developers and artist who had experience doing fast pace development of game jams. Even though a lot of my personal core development is games adjacent, I probably do not spent enough time actually creating games. The experience was very fulfilling and the social aspect of the game jam was also so much fun! In this blog, I want to detail what went on and my overall thoughts.
What Is It?
Global Game Jam is an annual event where thousands of game developers come together, from solo to teams, create a game that relates to the year's theme. In 2026, the theme was "Mask". It is up to the team to decide what this means. I've seen teams play around with physical masks, and even the act of masking to hide one's feelings. For our game, we played around with the idea of photoshop masks.
What do I do?
I did the game jam over at Glitch City, an indie collective with a studio in downtown Los Angeles that I frequent. You can probably think of it as a space where anyone can come to work on games. It was initially quite daunting to step into a venue with so many people where you have no idea what the process will be like or how it will go. Fortunely, everyone at Glitch are extremely supportive and welcoming. A lot of us initially just huddled together to introduce ourselves, and then eventually split up to form our small groups. There were some teams that came in already in groups, so as someone who came into the game jam alone, I had to check out everyone's vibe to see where I might be useful essentially. But again, I'm lucky to have found an amazing group of people to work on our game!
Keeping the Scope Small
It is so important to keep game mechanics simple during game jams. Something taught to me during my time at USC. It is easy to delve into details, expand upon it, and than find yourself in a situation where the feature scope is completely blown out of proportion and lose focus. Our team agreed that our only mechanic for our game is to basically be a platformer, where the only objective is to go up since we have rising lava that players will need to avoid. We eventually added some co-op features and power-ups that help the player, but the core game loop is still there and has not changed.
The Social Aspect
The Global Game Jam is a huge event all over the world, and just the thought that everyone has the same theme, and in the span of 48 hours, will try to complete a game is very exciting. Everyone has different ideas, art, and roles. During the final day, at the deadline, our venue gathered all the teams and did a show and tell of all the games presented. This was most of the highlights of the event, since it was a showcase of everyone's work where we take in and appreciate everyone's hard work in grinding the game out. The showcase was filled with hilarious moments, and some more serious and thoughtful ideas. Since this theme was "Mask", there are many interpretations on what this means, and there are no wrong answers. Regardless, the community feeling and then coming together at the end is a special feeling.
Final Thoughts
It was super cool to see our submission page with our game on it. I really look forward to next year and work on more games and just hang out with other developers. It really is an amazing event to get into and will highly recommend everyone to participate.