Petri Dish - GDTV Jam 2025 Submission

The Jam

The theme for this year's GDTV game jam was "Tiny World".  So my idea for it was to play as a single celled organism being experimented upon in a petri dish.

The jam was lined up for 10 days, but due to a busy work schedule, I almost missed the jam all together and didn't start making my game until the 4th day of the jam.  Also, with only 2 days where I could really work on the game, I had to keep the scope small enough for me to complete the project, but broad enough to allow me to try a few things out and learn a thing or two while I made the game.

The result was to try a simpler art style with the aim of reducing the time spent on graphics and effects, and making the game a "clicker" style game where the player's primary interaction with the game is by clicking the screen.  I had not tried either of these approaches previously, so thought it would help me in learning how to handle this style of game.

One of the main things I wanted to achieve was to create a somewhat relaxing and casual game that you can play, but where there is not much pressure to do much besides play the game.  I felt the hand drawn art style and the aim of making a clicker game fit the sort of game I was wanting to make.

The Game - Petri Dish

All in all, I spent about 20 hours making the game, including the art, music and effects.  I would normally like to spend more time than this, but due to work and life, this was all I could manage this time.

While scoping the game, I decided that there needed to be something to do in the game, a goal to work towards, so I came up with the idea of having hazardous zones for the player to encounter.  The aim of the game then became evolving your cell to gain a complete resistance to at least one of the hazardous zones.  As cells don't really do much on their own, I also decided that resistance can only be gained when a cell divides or splits.  This also meant that anyone playing the game would need to use a little strategy to succeed in completing the game.

After organising the scope, and deciding how I was going to make the game a game, rather than a "just click the screen" thing, I made the artwork and started building the game.  While the core mechanic of clicking the screen is simple, it also meant that everything else that happens in the game has to happen based on triggers and states.  These triggers and states then control every other interaction in the game, from entering a hazardous zone, to getting an infection or encountering a hazard object.

With the music, I made a brand new piece for this game that is supposed to be relaxing to listen to, and is supposed to complement the, hopefully, relaxing gameplay.  As a side note, in the community during the jam, a professional musician offered assistance to people wanting help with music for their games.  I asked for some feedback, and received it.  While I'm still learning, the feed back is useful, and with it coming from an Emmy nominated composer/song writer with about 20 years experience, it was incredibly reassuring to read the words "Really not bad stuff" as the first 4 words of their feedback (Thank You Nicholas Singer).

Once everything was put together for the game, I then focussed on doing some testing and thinking about where providing some polish and feedback to the player would be helpful in the game and worked on making these changes.

The Feedback

With the jam this year, I managed to upload my game a bit earlier than the deadline, and also posted in the community that it was ready to play.

The first day after it was uploaded, about 30 people had already played the game before the ratings were even open.  The good part to this was, I was already getting some feedback on my game, and it was positive.  The downside though was that because people had already looked at my game, not many came back to provide a rating once the ratings were open.  This isn't really a problem for me because, as nice as it would be to get in the top 10, or even top 50, I'm making the game to learn, and participating in the jam because I enjoy the jams.

Once the rating period was open, I managed to get a more than reasonable number of ratings in the jam, and plenty more feedback.  For the jam overall, the average number of ratings was 13 and a bit, while the median was 9.  I had 48 ratings in the jam, so I received far more feedback than most of the other participants, and greatly appreciate this fact.

Overall, the feedback I received was positive.  There are a few minor things that could do with improvement, but otherwise, people enjoyed the game and talked about wanting to see it expand further.

At the moment, I'm not sure what I want to do with the project.  However, if I do decide to do more to it and expand the gameplay, I have a selection of feedback and things to look at that can help me to make it better.

The Results

Now, before I mention the results, I just want to say that I never really expect my games to do massively well in a jam.  I'm still learning how to effectively make games that are enjoyable and up to a reasonable enough standard that people would play them and not think of the game as just an experiment or a game jam game.  At the moment, I make games as a hobby when I have the time and a jam rolls along at the right time for me that I think it fits me and my skill set.  I would love to be able to make a game that really succeeds, but I still have a few things to figure out before I get there.

In this jam however, I appear to have scored really well for the Theme category of the ratings, coming in 7th place out of 1023 games.  This was my best category, with the Overall category result ranking at 101st.  My next best rating was Aesthetics, at 97th place.  My lowest two rankings were for Fun, 162nd place, and Sound, 143rd.

This puts me in the top 10 games for Theme, the top 10% of games Overall, and for Aesthetics, and in the top 20% of games for Fun, and top 15% of games for Sound.  The other categories in the jam, Story, Mechanics and Music were all in the top 15% of games ranked, but better than the ranking for Sound.

As this is my second GDTV game jam, with my first being last year's (2024) GDTV game jam, I have already had a look at how my results compared with last year's results.  Last year, there were 1086 submissions vs 1023 this year.  Last year I had 47 ratings vs 48 this year.

Last Year's Submission - A Last Stand Story! - https://crazyhoundgamedesign.itch.io/a-last-stand-story

The comparison is as follows:

Overall, it appears as though there has been a marked improvement in the quality of the games I can make.  Last year, a lot more time went into the game I submitted, but this year I have been able to achieve better results, even though I could not spend as much time on it this year.

I'm glad I was able to participate in the GDTV jam again this year, and I also hope to do next year's jam as well if everything goes to plan.  I'm surprised at how close the metrics for the number of games submitted, and the number of ratings my game had, are compared to last year's jam, and it has allowed me to make a fairly direct comparison to the results I received last year.

Thank You to Everyone that Participated in the GDTV Jam 2025.