GMTK 2025 - A retrospective
Our second year of Game maker’s toolkit his annual game jam was a rollercoaster.
Last year we learned a lot, from scope to time management. When to pivot and how hard you should pivot. This year we got another chance to prove ourselves.
First of all, the team size and structure.
Last year we entered as a team of 3 developers, while this year we decided to participate with just 2. This meant we had to be even more weary of our time and if we spent it well. The upside was that though, that we had more experience working with unity and where last year I got to fulfil a project manager and it helpdesk role for a large amount of time. This year I got to spend 90% of my time doing what I’m good at
Our structure was also a lot different. We weren’t working sharing a 1 bedroom apartment with 4 people this time around. We both worked from home, were in a discord call and used a team productivity site to manage and spread out tasks. Who would have guessed this works better than a white board!
So because of these things, less sleep and more caffeine. We got a functional game that we called “Reoccurrence“ in roughly 4 days, now to adress the elephant in the room.
WHERE is Reoccurrence?
Sadly, we made a classic rookie mistake where we finished the jam with a functional gameplay loop, graphics and most sound effects for all the main mechanics. Everything was play tested and ready to ship. Except one thing, the main menu was not functioning and you couldn’t get around it. We reached out to the GMTK team, but sadly they would neither allow us to remove the scene all together nor allow us to fix it.
We fully understand that for the integrity of the contest, these measures couldn’t be taken. We live and learn and wish all the other teams the very best!
The good news
We are not abandoning Reoccurrence! We will be showing it off on the gamescom floor to general audiences and it will be coming to steam within a couple of months, with wishlists going live august 18th. Both windows and steamdeck will be supported at launch.
