This was our first ever game jam. We've always wanted to participate in one, and the Kenney Game Jam 2025 was a perfect place for us to start. This was mostly because of its asset restriction - we had to make a game using only free assets from Kenney Assets. Since we've only done tutorials before, we thought it would be a bit easier if we didn't have to worry about assets or anything else (even though I did make the soundtrack).
Regardless, we went into this not knowing much besides basic Godot concepts. We've been programming for a couple years prior to learning Game Dev so at least we weren't starting from scratch.
The theme was "Power". We had a lot of ideas early on, but we had to leave a couple behind because we couldn't find good assets to make them. We eventually landed on a tower defense game where "Power" is both your health and your currency. We called the game "Solar Charged" because your power is regenerated through solar energy. We implemented a weather system where the day cycle determines how much power you regenerate before the next enemy wave hits at night.
We worked around 35 of the 48 available hours. It was exhausting and the game was still lacking a ton of features and polish by the end (you couldn't leave a level once you started!).
We see this game as more of a learning experience than anything. It was a great way to get our feet wet and learn how to make a game from start to finish. We learned a lot about component-based design, state machines, and why clean code actually matters despite a tight constraint. We also learned a lot about scope and how to make sure we were building the most important features first.
Overall, we were happy with how the game turned out for our first jam. It set the foundation for our future projects and helped us escape tutorial hell. Check it out if you haven't already. It's a fun little game, and we learned a lot from making it.
Links
Rat Haven Studios