Tools

Unity Engine
Photoshop
Github

Roles

Programming

'Branches' app and Messages app
Score system
Notifications system
Make sure other team members can use these systems with the other apps

UI Design / Implementation

Design for homepage and notification screen
Taking mockups and putting them in-engine
Making UI scale properly across resolutions
Note: The entire game is UI elements

Little bit of everything

During a 3d game jam you end up all over the place
Adding audio, editing sprites, organizing builds

Challenges

Time

It's a game jam! Planning, executing, and getting everything polished + presentable in 60 hours is no mean feat. We scoped realistically and built our game in a modular way (apps), meaning we could add more if we had time. We ended up with 3 apps/3 days, and that ended up being a good amount.

Teamwork / Work Distribution

Breaking everything up and handing it out is difficult enough, and with 4/5 people and 60 hours you never get it perfect. There were many times where you get to some part of a task that you never discussed as a team. Luckily, we are all roommates so we were sitting apart from each other in the living room :P

Another plus is I already knew all my team members, both personally and professionally. Made the experience more enjoyable and easy.

Skills Gained

Group Game Jam

This was my first short (less than 3 day) game jam with a team. I've done some 5 day ones before, but these short ones are always more hectic.

API Design

I try to write my code in a way that is easy for others to understand and use - mostly because I'll be coming back to it in 3 months, trying to understand and use it. When I work with other people, that actually gets put to the test. Every project helps me refine my naming, how I organize into classes (whether you love or hate OOP it's C#), and how I comment my code (especially the XML comment blocks).

Unity UI

I haven't done a ton of complex stuff with Unity's UI system (the older UGUI stuff - haven't touched UI toolkit yet). This project let me get into more of the advanced layout tools and auto-sizing features (like expanding panels to fit text, laying out posts, scripting with scroll views).

Takeaways

You can work with your friends

It's something that I feel most people feel or worry about. You might not want to live with your friends, or date your friends, or work with your friends. If something goes wrong with the project, it's easy for it to leave the 'magic circle' of work and lead to personal conflicts.

But this jam went quite smooth. My recommendation (if any living soul ever reads this): If you want to work with your friends, try a game jam first. It's a good test - frantic, stressful - but it's also over quick. You aren't stuck angry at someone for weeks or months; you get to look back and laugh about the terrible 3 day project that fell apart (in our case it worked out pretty well).