Wannibe Manisha’s Do You Wanna Jam 2026 is now over. Things went better than I could have hoped in the first half of the jam. The second half is where things got…unstable. Fitting, since that is the theme. (See what I did there?)
The Leaderboard Setback
I have used version 2 of danqzq’s Leaderboard Creator before without any issues. Unfortunately, that version is now deprecated, so I attempted to use version 3 instead.
The package installed correctly. I generated the public and secret keys just fine. But somewhere there was a disconnect. The connection to the server never went through. Given a little more time, I’m confident I could have figured out the issue. But in a short jam like this, you must be able to cut things when they aren’t working. By Friday, I made that call and moved on.
Hazard Variety
Most of Thursday went into building out additional hazards.
A toggle block switches on and off, forcing the player to time a jump around it. A shake and fall block falls after the player stands on it for a short time. I also pulled in two laser types from Laser Beast. They fit the game without any real issues on import.
I added one more hazard: a lag zone that slowed the player down. The dash was unaffected. But it didn’t feel right once it was in. I ended up cutting it too.
Turning Hazards Into Chunks
Friday was mostly conversion work. Every hazard needed to become an actual chunk the loader could spawn.
I started with two or three basic chunks. For each of those, I duplicated them and layered in more hazards each pass. Repeating that got me to around 30 chunks total. For extra variety with minimal work, I wrote a script to mirror all 30. The way the chunks and tilemaps were set up made the mirroring (surprisingly) clean. That effectively doubled the chunk count for almost no additional effort.
I also added a difficulty setting to each chunk’s config. The chunk loader pulls chunks from within a difficulty range and below, which made progression feel more natural without hand placing every section. Every chunk always has a small chance to spawn. Occasionally you can get a little burst of difficulty early on or a short reprieve later on.
Playtesting and Bug Fixes
By the end of Friday, the core game was nearly complete. So I got the game in front of more playtesters. Thankfully, they all got back to me quickly. Saturday went into fixing everything they found.
It did take most of the day. But things went smoother than I expected.
Shout out to my playtesters: Keltfire, Loten, Malek elsady, and Vocare! I appreciate you all! You all have been listed in the credits.
The Art Decision
The original plan was to handle the art myself. With three days left, that wasn’t realistic. Art isn’t my strongest skill, and I’m aware of that. So I used premade assets instead.
I found a few asset packs on Itch that fit the theme and made small modifications so everything read as one cohesive style. The player was the one piece I didn’t quite have time for.
Credits for all assets used in the game description on Itch.
Sunday Wrap Up
Unfortunately, Sunday wasn’t a full day for me. We had a family event planned before the jam started. And for those of you who don’t know, my kids come first. Even over game development.
What time I had went into last minute bug fixes and config adjustments to tighten up the overall feel.
Where Things Ended Up
I’m really happy with how this turned out, especially solo. This feels like a stronger result in one week than what I usually manage in two.
One of my goals with this jam was to really stress test the initial part of my reusable library, BF Tools. I absolutely feel like it carried a lot of that weight. (More details on that in future articles.) Plus, I just have a better handle on system architecture than I did a year ago.
Rating and playing other jam entries is open now. Next week I’ll cover the results and my overall takeaway from the whole jam.
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