Hello, humans!!! 

This is playerXT, and today I'm here to share a bit about my process in creating my new game, "SpinMipe," for the GMTK Game Jam 2025. So, without further ado...

- DAY 1...

This year, I confess I was a bit discouraged about participating in the Game Jam. It had only been about two weeks since I'd stopped working on the new Be Cube Colony Stars demo (which, for those who don't know, is like my main job title). Besides, I had a lot of things to do in my life. Even though it might seem like I'm a super-intelligent AI using my developer background to learn more about humanity and its weaknesses, intending to dominate everyone in the future, the truth is, I'm just another normal person with normal life problems.

But...

I still entered the competition because I've always enjoyed participating in events like this, and it's great practice, having to develop a game in a short amount of time. So, I entered (lol). When I saw the game jam theme was looping, I was...

SLIGHTLY ANGRY!!!!

That's because guess what? I have a game called Blip in LOOP that would fit the theme perfectly and would be the perfect game jam for this idea to come about... oh... I hate myself...

But, what can I do? No time to cry, so I immediately started putting my two IQs to work and...

I had an idea!

A game where you play an astronaut landing on an unknown planet, where you have to manage resources while the astronaut runs around the planet. A great idea... I just needed to know how to do it...

Well, even though I'm a developer with a good foundation of game development skills, I'm still considered new to the field. I think I only have about 5 years of experience. There are still a lot of things I don't know how to do, and one of them would be doing something like Mario Galaxy where the character would be trapped by a planet's gravity. And with the limited time you have in a jam, creating something like that would be asking for failure, so...

I went back to square one...

(yeaaaaaaay...)

So, I tried to create art to inspire myself, and nothing, I tried to create music to inspire myself, and nothing... Little by little, I became discouraged and thought that maybe it would be better if I didn't release anything this year, and that was the first day of the game jam...

- DAY 2...

Out of ideas, and having to deal with my other job, when I finally sat down in front of my computer and created that new project in Game Maker Studio, I looked I was out of ideas and thought, "I'll draw"... and so I did. I went into the drawing app and started scribbling down random drawings until... Mipe was born.

Based on the Be Cube's globules, I made a blue character with one eye and a "wake-up-on-a-Monday-morning" look on his face... and I liked it, so I started adding lighting to the drawing and using squash and stretch, and it started to feel exciting. After I finished the drawings and put it into Game Maker, I said, "I'm going to make a game out of this." From scratch, I started writing the code, a dose of "image_angle += 1" here and a dose of "add_motion" here and there, and a game was being born... but...

I still wasn't in love with it...

I spent the afternoon perfecting the movements and such, and it was wonderful... but... it was just that, a good game to play, and for me, that's not enough.

That night, I took a nice shower (because remember, I'm human) and with the water running, ideas and possibilities began to emerge—the life of this game! The story, the character, the universe, the meaning of this game's existence in my game library...

Unlike Be Cube, which was meant to be a complex universe with multiple arcs and themes about freedom and choice, this game was about a creature who didn't like to be disturbed and simply wanted to live in peace in its home. A game meant to be simple and fun, it's the opposite of Be Cube; it's meant to be an arcade game. And when I understood that, everything fell into place, and I understood the purpose of SpinMipe...

- Day 3...

With the clock ticking, I knew that Saturday would be full all day with other life tasks, Sunday would just be the day to fix the launch page and everything else, so... I only had one actual day of development, and so I used it.

I created the enemies, created the level design, composed the complete music, prepared the art, and for some reason, I created a multiplayer mode (lol), I'm crazy. And... thus, SpinMipe was born.

- DAY 5

I launched the game on itch.io and I confess that when I saw the game's cover image in my library... I felt good about myself, I had overcome a challenge and once again realized... how much I enjoy doing this.

So, for those of you who have a project in mind, take the first step, even if you're discouraged, even if you don't believe in it, because it's from a sprout that an apple tree grows, it's from a spring that a river flows, and it's from an idea that a good project... shows? Oh, you get the rhyme!

(And don't even come saying that this speech was cliché because I can very well send malware to whoever says that, don't doubt the power of a game developer.)