I was hesitant to join the Kenney 2025 Game Jam, mostly because I felt that in 2024 I had overperformed my abilities and placed 3rd. It was wonderful to be in the top three of a jam focused entirely on game development, level design, and related work. About ten years earlier, I had also placed 3rd in a Ludum Dare, but that was for artwork. The game itself wasn’t much, just a walking simulator with light puzzle elements.

When I read the challenge about creating something cross-dimensional, I was immediately interested, but unsure if I could do it in Construct. We’ve all played games where you explore a 3D world and then interact with a 2D character on a wall, it isn’t new, but it’s rarely used. I liked that balance of familiar and fresh, and it felt like a great mix of retro and modern.

Once I started, I built the level map in Photoshop. I kept it simple, planning to iterate after everything was in place. In a game jam, the worst outcome is running out of time, so my goal was to finish a complete build first and use any extra time for polish.

Originally, I had planned a much more elaborate boss stage, and that idea will return when I develop Sparknoid full-time after I finish NEXIFY for Steam. But during the jam, the boss room became the ending room. I quickly made two additional rooms and a puzzle that was very simple, because by then I had only two hours left.

After finishing the 3D layout, I walked around the empty level and thought about how to turn it into puzzles. That’s when I looked at the walls and realized I already had the building blocks. I wanted the doors to open with electricity to meet the “Power” theme requirement, and I had envisioned power transformer boxes where small 2D puzzles could be solved, similar to The Witness, to unlock the doors. It was a little tacked on, but I liked the idea.

The 3D layout itself took less than an hour to make. I did briefly get stuck on an idea where the tiles would flip to color once a puzzle was complete, but I scrapped it because it broke the black-and-white aesthetic I preferred. Once I had the layout, I created a quick 2D character to run around on the puzzle tiles—that’s how Sparknoid was born. The first two levels took the most time, about 17 hours total.

The transition between 2D and 3D was messy. At the time, I handled it by taking a screenshot of the area where I wanted the puzzle to appear. Pressing “F” would open a new 2D layer over the 3D scene. Because Construct 3 isn’t built for 3D, the whole game had to be made in a top-down perspective.

Another issue was that invisible solids on one layer still interacted with objects on others. Sparknoid also remained active in every level, even if invisible, so in level 2, the character from level 1 was still present and could die from spikes. That caused chaos until I figured out a fix.

The rest of the levels came together quickly. One was originally supposed to be a speedrun along a hallway wall, but it evolved into finding an electricity pipe with Sparknoid hiding inside, which became my favorite part of the game. It showed me that even if you drop an idea, you can discover something stronger by changing direction. The final puzzle also used this mechanic in a clever way. These unexpected design moments are what I love most about game development.

I submitted with less than eight minutes left. The character animations weren’t even added until forty minutes before the deadline. They were finished early, but I kept putting off implementation. With just an hour left, I realized Sparknoid had no animations at all, so I rushed them in and barely had time to upload. Unfortunately, I hadn’t tested the animation update past level 1, and on level 3 it became very difficult to jump. I almost broke my own submission with that oversight. I’ve learned it’s best to treat a 48-hour jam as 45 hours, leaving the final 3 for testing and polish.

In the end, I’m thrilled I entered and ecstatic to place 2nd. I never expected to improve on my 3rd place finish in 2024. More importantly, at 45 years old, I feel like I’ve finally found what I should be doing with my life. I always doubted my game development skills. Artwork has been my strong point, but the Kenney Jam let me focus on game design. Placing top three in two consecutive years, with over a thousand total entries, feels incredible.

I’ll soon begin full production on NEXIFY for my first Steam release. I don’t expect much commercially, but if people enjoy my games, that’s all that matters.

Congratulations to everyone who submitted, and especially to AMP it UP, the well-deserved winner. I’ve played it many times already. As for next year’s jam, I’m not sure if I’ll enter, but the temptation to try for 3rd, 2nd, and 1st in a row might be too strong to resist.