Sooo, I was viewing the Hack Club programs page and I came across a page called Jame Gam. I checked it out, but I always found making a game overwhelming. So I was pretty much convinced I wasn’t going to participate, but after viewing the page properly and reading the FAQ, I saw a section that said “How do I get started?” and it had a few resources. I made up my mind that it was time to get my first game released.

I saw that we had 4 days (wait for the plot twist). I was doing my set of 100 push-ups (I’m not flexing, and also I only do push-ups on the weekend). I was trying to brainstorm an idea, and I really wanted my first game to be like Super Mario. I mean, like jumping on enemies and killing them. Just then, a random idea spawned in my head: DIAPER BABY.

Now, the idea was deeply related to a short video I watched of two babies arguing with each other:

Baby 1: Babies wear diapers and I am not a baby. Baby 2: But you are wearing a diaper.

That’s what I watched. I haven’t found the exact video, but that was the spark. Also, I don’t know why, but I remember the words “diaper baby” being used in a TV show or movie I watched. I think it might have been Young Sheldon, and maybe it was Missy who said it. I don’t actually know.

Then, in my mind, I was planning the game, but nothing was coming.

I went to YouTube and watched a tutorial video by Coco Code. He introduced me to level design and Pixel Adventure (a free asset for creating levels). I spent a few hours getting the level set up. It looked pretty good.

I went to Piskel (a place to draw sprites), and I drew a really weird sprite. I knew it wasn’t going to work, so I searched on YouTube again and came across a golden video from Juniper Dev. She quickly explained all the important parts of pixel art, and then I got started. I made it in Piskel, and it was actually small.

Then I had to go play football and be Ronaldo, jk again. I shut down the laptop and Piskel deleted my frickin’ design. I was really sad, and by then only one day was left for the game jam to finish, and I was really stressed because I hadn’t gotten much set up.

I sat down, opened Slack, and read a message that the Game Jam begins in a few hours for the theme to be released. I was like, “Wasn’t it going to finish?” So when I asked, I was truly shocked. They said it was going to begin and our game had to follow a theme. I got scared that maybe my game wouldn’t match the theme, and I was hellbent on making Diaper Baby.

the chat i had with the people abt the theme

My first sprite design.

my second sprite design

final sprite design

Small thing that I forgot to mention: I was sharing my sprites and asking for feedback, and I would like to share some of it here.

When I was making my second sprite, I asked for a little help with the shadow.

I got to completing my level design and getting my sprite walking, and then wham, I was stuck again. My sprite had a few scenes, but I didn’t know how to make a 32×32 sprite walk. I mean, the sprite was tiny, so how was I going to make it walk? It made no sense to me. I asked a few more people and they gave suggestions. I came up with the idea of just playing the animation of my sprite moving their hands, which kind of looks like dancing. BUT IT IS NOT A DANCING BABY, IT IS A DIAPER BABY.

Anyway, I set the sprite animation to autoplay throughout the entire game. It was kind of cool, and I was quite happy. Then the bad news came: I didn’t want to work anymore. It was Saturday, which meant we had 2 days left to submit. I was procrastinating so badly, and my game looked like this ⬇

It had rained lightly, and there was no electricity for a lot of hours (very common in Pakistan), and most of my family was going to some kind of party. So I was at home with two of my brothers and I chilled. I chilled and procrastinated, and I procrastinated really badly. I doomscrolled and did everything I should not have done. I even went to sleep even though I had decided to stay awake to build the rest of the game.

Two things I didn’t realize:

• The game had a lot of work
• I was relying on tomorrow without thinking about what life had in stock for me

I had slept after 12:30, not very late. When I woke up, there was no electricity. I was under a lot of stress because 10:00 pm was the submission. I was already down to 12 hours and had nothing really set up. No enemies, no score, no timer.

Btw, the theme was Countdown.