Game jams were always something I felt a little intimidated by. With a short amount of time, you are expected to create a complete game with a gameplay loop, passable visuals and audio, playable, and bug free. And most of all, going through the motions of game development within such a short time can get very stressful!

My friends Auros and Bobbie invited me to join them in the 52nd Ludum Dare game jam. They are great friends of mine, and we collaborated on smaller projects in the past, so I figured the game jam would be more enjoyable.

With our team of 3, we set out to create a game jam entry following the theme of harvest. Admittedly, we were kinda stumped on what games to create that weren't farming simulators, so we instead tried to spruce things up with a unique setting and a basic story.

In Lunaculture, you play as Dr. Mamon, tasked to plant and sustain crops for the newly established colony on the moon of Iridium. With weekly quotas to meet, you are slowly given more variety of plants to help satisfy the colony.

Lunaculture was a huge learning experience as a project.

From time management, project management, and small team collaboration, I learned a ton about working with strict deadlines and in game development scenarios. A lot of people say that game jams are a great way to learn the game development process and how development works in a professional workplace. And after participating in a game jam myself, I am incliend to agree!

The results of our game jam entry was a solid "alright" for our first game jam project. Out of 1692 submissions to Ludum Dare 52, Lunaculture placed an overall 357th, or about the top 21%. Our team was more than happy with this score!

From Lunaculture, we took our learned lessons and applied them to the next Ludum Dare, bringing on more of our friends as well. To see how our second game jam venture went, check out Liver Die!