Short summary on the making of "FreqOut". For whoever it might interest. Maybe thats future us.

We entered the jam excited as we kind of formed a fixed team of three during previous jams. Together we cover every aspect necessary to make a decent game - code, art, music, storywriting, gameplay - as we have quite complementary skills. Also we prepared a template with the latest version of Godot, thoroughly testing web export and any bugs that could prevent a successful submission.

So meeting in the very night the theme was released (CET, mind you) we were pleased - an awesome theme and ideas were immediately flowing. After some brain storming and  a lot of dead ends we settled for something we are all passionate about: sound, music, frequencies. Sound waves were the thinkg we wanted to work with and we had a vision about a cool  3D game incorporating sound waves as a primary mechanism.

Team assembled, template ready, game idea  within the first 2 hours and a full month of time ahead - what can go wrong? Nothing?

There was a romantic plan (at least in my head) of prototyping, iterating the gameplay often, playtesting with friends and eventually spending a whole week just on polish, but plans hate meeting reality.

It started out well, a suiting game title was found almost instantly, a prototype with fps controller and enemies emitting attack waves was up to test within a day or two. Steady progress followed, incorporating ideas from the inital brainstorm an beyond, such as scanning enemies, weapon pitch preview, etc. but then...

The first fights against the engine started. In my experience this always  happens at some point especially if you enter uncharted territory. For me that was navigation and pathfinding of entities in a 3D world. Godots grid map allows for navigation meshes, but was bugged, especially in the web export. Nothing would work properly and I discovered it to be known issues.

Then discussions about the gameplay started. Should the game be more shootery or more puzzely like Portal. Should the frequencies and gameplay lie in the attacks? In shield defense? Area control attacks or directed? I expected  the gracious timeframe to allow for exactly these discussions and iterations and explorations of different gameplay ideas, picking the one that turns out to make the most fun and sense.

Well, life hit and everyone was kind of busy, motivation dropped a little I'd assume and we really had all kinds of incidents that did not allow for continous progress. Pet emergencies, kids getting sick and a team member losing his day job was just the tip of the iceberg.

So 1 week before the deadline there was some groundwork done but nothing close to a releasable game. So we got together on discord made a plan on what has to be done to get this game released, sticking to original ideas as close as possible. Eventually it felt like a regular 1 week jam. At least to me. And I keep wondering where the whole month went.

We had to fight the engine again and on the very last day our level building was torpedoed by bugged imports from blender and bugged generation of navigation meshed from imported shapes. In the end we delivered and I am happy and a little proud that we are part of the jam, of the voting period and everything that is to come.

What could we have done better? Tough to pinpoint for me. As always time available was overestimated, that's for sure. And I think someone should probably take the producer/management role for efficiency, but its a hobby in the end and about fun - right?