Wannibe Manisha’s Do You Wanna Jam 2026 is now officially over. Ratings are out and things were about on par with what I expected. There’s a lot of takeaways, both positive and negative. So let’s talk about them in this post mortem.
Ratings
Out of 439 entries, I placed 90th overall. That puts my entry right at the top 20%. I usually like to be in the top 25%, so I hit my goal.
- Audio: 26
- Overall: 90
- Art/Graphics: 92
- Theme: 100
- Fun/Gameplay: 151
- Originality: 193
I was pleasantly surprised by the audio placement. Maybe I have a potential calling in game audio?
The Positives
BF Tools Carried the First Day
Stress testing my reusable library, BF Tools, was my main goal going into this jam. The event bus, object pooling, and the other core systems let me hit a working core loop inside day one. That has never happened for me before on a jam this short. Now I know for sure I’m heading the correct direction with the library.
The Build and Decay System Held Up
I built the tile build and decay system specifically to prototype an idea for a future Metroidvania or platformer project. More details on the build and decay system in next week’s article if you are interested. For now, I know it held up under jam conditions. Not quite optimal, but well enough that I would be confident using a similar approach in that next project.
Adaptive Audio Was the Surprise Win
I built an adaptive track using 8 stems of the same song using Garageband. As the player’s difficulty increases, more stems layer in and the music picks up with it. And it got me 26th place in audio! I also had a ton of fun composing it, which isn’t something I get to do very often.
The Negatives
Feature Cuts
The leaderboard I tried to use was danqzq’s Leaderboard Creator. I’ve used version 2 before without issues. But that version is deprecated now, so I moved to version 3. The keys generated fine. But the connection to the server never went through. I think I could have tracked down the issue given more time. But a one week jam doesn’t leave room for that, so I cut it Friday.
I also cut a lag zone hazard that slowed the player down. The dash stayed unaffected, so it wasn’t a difficulty problem. It just didn’t feel right once it was in the game.
And probably the biggest thing that bothered me: I didn’t get to the player sprite I wanted. Everything except the player used premade assets. I lost a Sunday because of a family event I forgot about (my own fault!). As a result, the player never got a finished sprite asset.
Pacing Was the Biggest Miss
If I had to change one thing, it would be playtesting with more people.
One of my playtesters flagged pacing as an issue. That was before I added chunks with proper hazards. Once I added those, the pacing felt much better.
During the rating period, several people mentioned the game felt slow to pick up speed early on. Honestly, they’re right. For a game jam, I erred on the side of easier. Probably a little too easy. More playtesters earlier likely would have caught that before submission instead of during ratings.
Two Week Quality in One Week’s Time
I’ve done a fair number of two week jams in the past. Comparing output directly, this one week result matches that quality level. Maybe even surpasses it a little.
Without a doubt, BF Tools is why. The core systems that usually eat the first few days of a jam were already built and tested going in. I had great feedback systems like screen flash, vignette, and haptics working within minutes rather than spending a dedicated day near the end.
This freed up the rest of the week for content and polish instead of infrastructure. Overall, I just worked much less and was generally less stressed.
Start a Library Early
If you’re a solo dev (or even a team) without a reusable library yet, start one now. It was, by far, the biggest factor in how much I got done this week.
I’ll be covering my own process for building out BF Tools in a dedicated series going forward. Starting with the systems already in place and working through what’s still missing. Stick around for that series if you are interested.
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