This is my first released 3 hour game jam.
It's not my first 3 hour game jam.

I think I fell in love with the concept of Game Jams because of the Train Jam, a 52 hour game jam in a train from Chicago to San Francisco. I participated a lot in Source Engine game jams, but Source is easy. I've been meaning to learn more standalone-friendly engines.

I've (hidden) released a one hour game jam entry, I think my  first Godot project. Since then, there have been a few Godot jams I've participated in, but never were truly happy with. Partly, because I just enjoy 3D so much more. I made a small non-game in Godot about waiting rooms - which took me ages, partly because it was for touch.

I'm in a life phase where I'm discovering what it means to be a witch to myself. The topic "sacrifice" hit close to home. I knew it had to be something simple. I made a list of things that could be sacrificed.

• yourself for others
• brain for heart
• heart for brain
• passion for connection
• youth for adulthood
• adulthood for (a second?) puberty
• temporary suffering for long term well-being
• time for recognition

I really liked the first, surrendering yourself for others, as well as the last, surrendering time. I wanted the PLAYER, not the character they control, to be involved in the sacrifice ritual. Quickly this became the idea:

a long dark staircase, at the end, the duration it took you to play. You light a match, the game quits.

With that, I opened my laptop on a train, launched Godot, only to close it, to open blender and make the stair model. It took me ~70 minutes to get the staircase loop and time on label working ingame. Then I took a couple days long break.

I wrapped it up monday morning, briefly before the deadline, added some music, sound and fire sprite. Then  I missed the deadline by 5 minutes but was kindly still let to submit.

Again, on a different train, at midnight, I opened it again to patch it a little so it is playable on mobile.

A better version of this game also keeps track of the sacrificed time in a database, collects it, displays it somewhere, purely for my own sadistic gratification. I also tried to reverse engineer how itch's comment system works because a Web-Game triggered automatic comment about how much time this player sacrificed would've been extremely funny (and probably gotten me banned from itch). Luckily, I gave up the moment I realized that while the game can execute JavaScript in the Browser, it's in an iframe and that means it can't easily access the itch.io game page. What a shame :p