Teamwork and Turbulence: What GGJ 2025 Taught Me About Collaboration

Feb 14 min read

Have you ever tried building a game within a 48-hour deadline? Now imagine doing it while battling storms, power outages, and creative disagreements. Here’s what surviving Global Game Jam 2025 taught me about teamwork under pressure. Spoiler: You’ll learn why too much planning can backfire, how caffeine fuels miracles, and why 'Bubbler' isn’t just a bad name (okay, maybe it is not).

How GGJ works

For the uninitiated, Global Game Jam (GGJ) is like a hackathon, but with more pixel art and sleep deprivation. Game devs—from pros to newbies—come together to create games around a theme, usually within a tight deadline. It’s partly a creativity sprint and partly a social experiment. Whether it's a one-day jam or a month-long challenge, the goal is simple: make something fun around the given theme while learning and connecting with others. In Belfast, Farset Labs hosts GGJ [1], offering a cosy workspace, endless coffee, and enough snacks to fuel your wildest game ideas. And trust me, you’ll need that caffeine when the clock’s ticking down!"

The Big Idea (Friday 💡 )

This was my second GGJ in Belfast, and while last year was a warm-up, this year was a proper sprint. I teamed up with two university friends—our usual crew. The theme, 'Bubble,' [2] was announced over Discord thanks to storm Éowyn [3] raging outside, trapping us indoors for the night. We tossed around ideas on Discord ranging from a bubble shooter to a bubble-based RPG (overconfident here), but eventually landed on a 3D puzzle platformer called 'The Bubbler.' [4] The name? A throwback to an inside joke from last year. With power outages looming, we sketched out our roles and hit the sack early, saving our energy for Saturday's grind.

Rise and Grind (Saturday 🍩)

Saturday morning kicked off with fresh optimism—and doughnuts and coffee for breakfast (which, for the record, I’ve never had before, it must be an American thing I guess?). Our plan was simple: nail down the core mechanics by midday, then tackle level design so we could piece everything together on Sunday. Reality, however, had other plans...

Two donuts on plates, one with sprinkles, the other with caramel and nuts. A mug with humorous text, notebook, and laptop in background. — Donut and Coffee time, I went with the Homer Simpson sprinkled style donut.

Bubble physics turned out to be trickier than expected, and creative disagreements popped up like bubbles. One big takeaway? It's hard to fully grasp someone else’s vision from just words alone. Sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet and trust your team when implementing features.

The funny thing is, we had a plan but we didn’t really know what the game was going to be until we actually started putting it together. New mechanics emerged, old ideas got scrapped, and by the evening we had something almost playable. At one point, I was convinced we should’ve just called the game Debugger instead. But with caffeine and sheer determination, we pushed through, fuelled by the hope that by the end of the night, we’d have something that actually worked.

The bubble floats on through traps while eventually bursting from spikes. — This section presents players with complex traps, heightening the experience akin to a rage baiting game.

Hallelujah (Sunday 😇)

Sunday was the final push—the last chance to pull everything together and make something playable, even if it was a little rough around the edges. As the 5 o’clock deadline hurtled toward us faster than you can say "How now brown cow," we scrambled to add a few last-minute mechanics and wrestled with Git merge conflicts.

One of the biggest casualties of the crunch was a feature that should’ve been implemented from the start—a mechanic where the bubble could absorb smaller bubbles and shoot them out. This was meant to be a core puzzle mechanic, allowing players to trigger buttons to open doors. Unfortunately, due to the chaotic nature of our development process, we had to scrap it with only about 10 minutes left before submission.

Despite the last-minute cuts, the game actually turned out pretty well! It had that indie jank, but at least it felt more like a game than The Puzzler—last year’s attempt, which was basically just a narrator roasting you the whole time [5]. Progress, right?

A Rumble ball that chases the player, the player traps the rumble ball by using buttons and doors. — Rumble ball section

What I learnt (The Takeaway 🥡)

After a weekend of tough decisions, caffeine-fuelled coding, and last-minute problem-solving, I walked away with a few key lessons.

1. Over-planning is a trap. Having a clear vision is great, but game jams are unpredictable. Some of our best mechanics came from adapting on the fly rather than rigidly sticking to our initial plan, even with the plan we didn't know exactly what we were building until we started putting things together.

2. Communication matters. It’s easy to assume everyone is on the same page, but words alone aren’t always enough. Sometimes, you need to see ideas in action before they make sense.

3. Cutting features hurts—but it’s necessary. We had to let go of some cool ideas to make sure the core game was functional. It’s better to have a simple but playable game than an ambitious mess.

4. Embrace the chaos. Things will break. Git will betray you (I've never been so annoyed with Git until this weekend). And that’s okay. The key is staying flexible, keeping the energy up, and remembering why you’re doing this in the first place—to have fun and create something cool.

At the end of the day, we showed off what we had built to the rest of the Jammers to see happy grinning faces at demoing of it, it wasn’t perfect, but it existed, it was playable, and people could actually enjoy it. And honestly? That’s what makes game jams worth it.

Your GGJ Experience

If you’ve ever taken part in a game jam (or any creative sprint, really), you know the mix of excitement, chaos, and last-minute panic. What was your experience like? Did you have a moment where everything clicked—or a moment where everything fell apart?

Maybe you’ve tackled a tough deadline, worked on a team project that took unexpected turns, or even had to cut a feature at the last second. I’d love to hear about it! Drop a comment or share your best (or worst) game jam stories below. Let’s swap war stories!