Holiday Game Jamming
2025-12-27
Play on itch.io
Merry Christmas and (almost) Happy New Year! The holidays are upon us and what does that mean? FREE TIME! (maybe) (sort of) (who knows)
I like to game jam in December, to see if I can challenge myself and the skills I gained over the years. I don't do it every single year and I don't even always get a workable game at the end, but it's always fun.
This year, I decided to game jam alone, which I'm dubbing Amusing Noodle Games VERY FIRST Winter Game Jam! Next year I really hope to get more people to join in and for the second Winter Jam there will be more than one entry! (:
I made a game about packing packages into a truck because it seemed appropriate for the month of December. I’ve made similar games before so the graphics were easy. I made some basic presents, basic ribbons, a few different wrapping paper designs and then put them all together with different colours to randomize presents. The approach worked pretty well and it gave a pretty wide range of gifts that looked somewhat Christmas-y.
The truck itself was also pretty easy, it was just a simple grid in the back. Gifts could be placed into open spaces but could only be picked back up if there was nothing on top! Visually, I added a bunch of cute Christmas decorations that were unlockable via a store in between rounds. This was actually mostly an afterthought so I quickly drew the decorations but I think they still turned out pretty well!
I spent more time than I should have on the wheels, making them cute and making sure they rotated, only to have them barely be perceptible during the animation, but it's fine.
Overall it took about 5 days, but I was also getting other stuff done during this time, so a pretty quick jam! But also longer than my usual jams, which are about 3 days.
There are so many more fun little features I managed to add, like screen shaking for heavy presents, fun “weather” animations with the snow, the shop and other small things. Feel free to try it out if you want to see!
And as with all of my game jams, they either turn out way too easy or way too hard. After 5 days of packing trucks in panic mode, I apparently got pretty good at the game, and it ended up being much too hard. Because I didn’t want it to be too easy… of course. Maybe one day I’ll update it to add a difficulty setting.
Until then, enjoy packing packages! Play on itch.io
- Sarah