Post-Mortem: Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2

This is the second jam in a five-jam gauntlet during August through September. Read about the first jam here.

User Brackeys has hosted the “Brackeys Game Jam” series for the past several years. They are always popular. They are always large. This is (partly) why I never participated in any of the past Brackeys jams, but I decided to change that this year and join Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2. It ran from Aug 23rd to Aug 30th - a total of seven days.

Two things need to be pointed out: First, this jam and the previous jam had an overlap. That jam ended on Aug 24th, whereas this one started on Aug 23rd. I was finishing and submitting the first game, Holoseum, AFTER this jam began. So right there is a squeeze on the ol’ schedule.

Second, the first jam ran for nine days and Brackeys 2026.2 ran for only seven. Again, another time crunch on the development cycle. Not a problem, right?

Well…

It was fine. But, if you read the first post-mortem [link], remember I said I upped the ante for the second jam? I wasn’t kidding.

Before Brackeys 2026.2 began, just like before, I defined my goal for the jam so, again, I would have a clear direction and could come out of the gate stomping and swinging. Not knowing what the theme would be, I wrote a list of a few goals to implement and would choose the most fluid one after participants knew the theme. The list included incorporating a day/night cycle in some way, setting up an overworld, [refer to list].

To many participants’ chagrin, the theme was “Trust No One.” Not the worst theme to work with, but certainly not the most fluid or intuitive to springboard from.

I did minimal amounts of planning during the day on the 23rd as I finished Holoseum for the first jam. In the evening was when I really put pencil to paper. An important part of this initial phase, especially with the less-intuitive themes, is word association. I had to lean far into this technique for this theme. It was a difficult hurdle to overcome.

After a lot of back-and-forth of ideas, I landed on the concept for the new project: The player controls a witch and has to move around town during the day collecting sage, at risk of making the townsfolk and the town guards suspicious, and she uses the sage to fight restless spirits at night. This concept fit the theme of “Trust No One” and it included the day/night system goal.

Great!

In addition to the overlapped dates and the shorter jam window, I realized the project concept was essentially two games in one. Great. Even more of a squeeze on the clock. I was up for the challenge though!

Like the previous jam, I had two full days, back-to-back, dedicated to development. I figured if I could get the “day” half of the game functional by the end of the first full jam day (day two), and get the “night” half of the game functional by the end of the second full jam day (day three), then I would be in good shape.

The first day of brainstorming turned into a night of brainstorming. I stayed up far too late hashing out and scribbling different ideas on paper. It was productive and set me up for development, which is always great but not at the cost of getting a late start the following day. Which is exactly what happened.

I swear it’s not Pac-Man.

Thankfully I had a clear vision to work from, because yes, I did get a late-morning start to development of the “day” part of the game. I should also mention that I wasn’t building the idea from nothing; I based the “day” part on Pac-Man in the level design, layout, and with the object of collecting things.

The process wasn’t without challenge. In this section of the game, the player moves around a village to find and collect sage (needed in the “night” part of the game). Town Guards become suspicious of you if they see you. It took most of the afternoon to get this mechanic to work. Initially I wanted Guards to patrol (similar to Pac-Man ghosts moving around), but the limitations of the game engine (GB Studio) prevented this from working. Basically the movement of the Guards made the game lag, as though it was trying to process through molasses. So I scrapped the movement in favor of stationary Guards - an easier element to implement, but it still took the remainder of the day.

Ultimately I got everything functioning by mid-evening - a pleasant surprise considering I was expecting to be working on it well into the night. I was, at that point, right on if not slightly ahead of schedule! Needless to say, I was also happy to go to bed earlier than expected.

The next day’s development task was somewhat more simple. I intentionally outlined the “night” portion of the game to build on the systems created for Holoseum in the previous jam. In this iteration, the player flies high above the town using the sage to fight off restless spirits. Combat is the core element; the three spirit types are randomly spawned, just as the six enemy types are randomly spawned in Holoseum.

Despite building on what I had already done, there were far more components interacting with one another and so there was far more room for bugs and errors (of which there were plenty that day). It took me into the night to get this part of the game functioning, but I did get it functioning and continued to stay on schedule.

I don’t know what happened, if it was stress or if I ate something, but the next few days I had minor but lingering stomachaches and nausea which dampened my ambition and slowed my progress. Still, I kept my focus as best I could. Over these days I had to make the art and graphics or risk having to submit the game looking like a bunch of squares, blocks, and arrows (read: looking ugly).

One of my focuses has been creating a clear User Interface (UI), which is how information is communicated to the player. In the final days of this jam, I redesigned the Heads-Up Display (HUD; the information displayed while playing, such as score, lives, time, etc.) about four or five times, each iteration becoming more clear and more organized.

Title screen for The Witching Hour.

On the final day of the jam, I spent from late morning until the night implementing the art, graphics, creating and implementing audio (music and sound effects), and general polishing (finding and fixing any major bugs). All in all, I submitted The Witching Hour about seven hours before the submission window closed.

I said in the previous entry that Holoseum was the best game I had developed at the time of submitting it. A week later, The Witching Hour became the best game I had developed. It was fun to develop, I again pushed myself to do better as a developer, and I learned along the way.

There were a total of 2,244 games submitted to Brackeys Game Jam 2026.2. The Witching Hour ranked 669th overall (top 30%), scoring 263rd in the Audio category (top 12%) and 418th in the Visuals category (top 19%). More importantly, just as with the previous jam, several other participants provided written feedback for The Witching Hour, which is always far more valuable than a final score.

At this point in the Five-Jam Gauntlet, I was having a blast and I was excited to switch gears to the first of two music composing jams. Stay tuned to read about my experience with Five-Jam Gauntlet part 3!