Recently I discovered Game in a Day, an event where individuals and teams try to make a game within 24 hours. Naturally you aren’t expected to make a full professional Quake clone, but it is possible to come up with something that is playable, no matter how crude. What’s really cool is that after your development frenzy, you have something you could clean up and polish over the next few weeks or months.
I’m definitely interested in doing a Game in a Day for myself. Right now in order to work on a project, I need to know what I am doing so I can set aside time for it between work and class. I know beforehand that nothing will get finished in a session because I can’t possibly do anything for longer than a few hours. It’s hard to build up experience when I don’t know when the next session will be. If, on the other hand, I know that my constraint is that I need to have something playable at the end of a session or two, that it isn’t meant to be anything more than a fun project, then I can work without worrying about the progression of the project so much. A nice bonus is having a somewhat completed project by the end.
Previous participants of the Game in a Day have posted .plans about their progress. You could see how they went from scratch to a game within 24 hours. Some people managed to make incredibly fun games in even less time! I am hoping to join their ranks.