This last weekend, I joined a game jam. It didn’t go too well. As is tradition, I’m going to do a post mortem—or an analysis of how the jam went, and what lessons I’ll be taking into the next jam I do.

So let’s dive right in.

Game jams are where game developers, whether programmers, artists, designers, musicians, or anything in between, get together to make a game over a short period of time (usually a weekend). Jams can have thousand...