Recap
Back in 2024 we took part in our first game jam — you can read all about it here. So in 2025 we jumped into another one. We’re trying to make it a yearly thing now, because it’s genuinely fun, we get to meet so many new people, and it’s a great way to test our skills.
This time we tried to build a slightly larger game instead of a small, tightly scoped one. Honestly, that wasn’t the smartest idea 😅 — but that’s exactly what a game jam is for: pushing your limits.
MelonJam — 2025
This time we entered Winter MelonJam 2025, organized by GDC. It ran for 72 hours, so we decided to aim a bit higher and build a longer game. We were ready to give it our all and break into the top three.
This jam also split participants into three categories — Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. Since we’d already done one jam and wanted a real challenge, we signed up for the Intermediate category. With that settled, we were ready for the theme reveal.
During the jam we also met another team like us, pugsgames. They’re focused on the horror genre and joined the jam to build another cool horror game.
Theme Reveal
As the jam kicked off, the organizers first ran a nice YouTube livestream introducing their team and the club behind the event. Then the theme finally dropped: “Mask.”
“Mask” can be interpreted in plenty of ways — from a literal face mask to the technical idea of masking a number — so it left lots of room for creativity.
After the reveal, it took us a while to settle on a single idea, since every member had a different one and picking just one was tough. In the end we landed on Mask Dimension. It’s a platformer where the player gets trapped in a mask dimension, a place where every creature wears a mask, and each mask carries its own traits. The player collects masks and wears them to gain those abilities. The final goal is to collect every mask and fight the final boss at full power. And once again, we went with pixel art.
Design & Development
In development, our main focus was building the mask traits — the abilities. First we made different types of enemies, each wearing one mask and carrying its powers. Some enemies were invisible, some were much faster, some were much stronger, and some could even walk through solid objects. 😅
Then came environment design — the part we badly underestimated in terms of time. Building a good environment where the player can explore and discover things is harder than it looks. It takes a lot of trial and error, and a lot of iterations to nail that perfect feel.
We were already running behind schedule when it hit us: one of our team members had to leave in the middle of the jam due to a personal emergency. That set us back even further, so some of us pulled an all-nighter just to keep the game moving. 😵💫
After about two days (48 hours) we only had three enemies and three masks ready, when our original plan called for five of each — and we hadn’t even started on the boss fight. So we made the call to drop the boss fight entirely and focus on finishing the remaining enemies and masks.
Trying to build the boss fight while still making masks and enemies would have just made a mess. So we added the rest of the masks and enemies, then kept testing the game and polishing its environment. It was still fun to play, and all the mask abilities and enemies worked fine. I just wish we’d had more time — we could have made it even better.
Finally the last 24 hours ticked away and we submitted our game (without the boss fight).
You can try the submitted game here.
Review & Result
Unlike the last jam, this one didn’t live-stream the gameplay — mostly because of the sheer number of submissions. But we still checked out other entries, especially pugsgames’ submission, Plague Under Mask, a horror game built around a classic plague-mask theme. It’s just amazing to see how much people can create in such a short amount of time.
Finally the results came out, and as expected we didn’t make the top three — but we did earn an Honorable Mention. That’s real motivation to come back next time and push for a top-three spot. We also learned an important lesson: don’t pick a game so large you can’t finish it, or one you won’t have time to polish even if you do.
Our strategy for the next jam will be to choose a smaller game and polish it well enough to stand out in the spotlight.
Thanks for reading — see you at the next game jam. 👋