A Reflection on the Stop Killing Games Community Jam

July 11 to 21, 2025
Game: Leech Protocol Theme: Limited Lifetime Team size: 5 Engine: Unity Tools: Miro, Discord, Google Sheets, Excel
Role: Producer / System Designer

We originally formed our team to prepare for the GMTK Jam, and wanted to make a small warm-up project to test collaboration and pipelines. Around that time, we saw the Stop Killing Games Jam and decided to join.

Here's a reflection I wrote after the jam, covering what we built, what worked, what didn’t, and what I learned as both producer and system designer. I’d love to hear your thoughts or hear about your own jam experiences too.

This was my first time participating in a game jam. I entered it hoping to practice gameplay and system design, but I ended up learning far more than expected, not just about design, but about communication, leadership, and how ideas evolve under pressure.

Since I had assembled the team, I naturally stepped into the role of producer. I facilitated discussions, scheduled meetings, created shared documents, and tried to keep us aligned from beginning to end. At the same time, I took responsibility for the game’s core design. That included the central mechanic, system balancing, documentation, and shaping the tone and mood through narrative and aesthetics.

The game we made was called Leech Protocol, a sci-fi tower defense game where the main collector slowly loses HP over time, even when it's not under attack. Players must gather resources to repair it while defending against waves of enemies. This constant decay became the anchor of both our gameplay loop and our narrative direction.

Our original idea was to portray an interstellar resource extraction protocol run by a cold corporate system. The player is part of that system, assigned to oversee a mining operation on an alien planet, under constant attack by the native defenders. We wanted this to carry a satirical undertone, reflecting extractive colonial logic from the perspective of the exploiter. Although we didn't have time to fully implement the narrative systems during the jam, we plan to build on this concept in future updates.

The jam’s theme, “Limited Lifetime,” naturally fit into the core mechanic. The collector begins dying the moment the game starts. You can’t just defend it, you have to maintain it. Every repair costs resources, and gathering those resources exposes you to more danger. This pressure shaped the pacing and tone of the entire experience.

The name Leech Protocol came after the gameplay loop had taken shape. It captured what we were building, a lifeless machine slowly draining a living world. I’ve always been interested in the connection between mechanics and narrative, and this one felt especially aligned. The gameplay didn’t need cutscenes to explain itself. The system told the story.

Originally I planned to build the prototype in Unity myself, but one of our teammates had tower defense experience and got a working version up quickly. That shifted my focus. I moved deeper into documentation, UI sketches, feedback for art and audio, and managing the pace of our internal workflow. I ended up writing the full system spec, outlining the visual and narrative tone, and handling day-to-day team coordination.

Looking back, I found two development pipelines especially useful. First, we let our mechanics shape the narrative, and used that to guide the art, audio, and UI to create a unified tone. Second, we let mechanics define the numbers, and used those numbers to pace our level design. For me, mechanics are like grammar, numbers are tone, and levels are the sentences that bring everything together.

The hardest part wasn’t the design or the balancing. It was communication. I often thought I was being clear, only to realize others understood something completely different. I started using diagrams, reference images, and examples from other games to make ideas land more cleanly. Since then, I’ve been building a personal reference library to support my own design communication. I now believe that a good design isn’t just something you think through, it’s something you can explain, test, and reproduce.

There were also difficult decisions. One mechanic we had to cut was a system where the collector’s efficiency would drop if its HP was low. The idea was to make maintenance more meaningful, but it complicated balance and overwhelmed the pacing. It was a good idea, just not the right one for a 10-day project. Cutting it made the game sharper.

What I’m most proud of is that we finished. We shipped a playable, thematically coherent game in 10 days. I was involved in nearly every part of production. I made calls when things got stuck, stayed focused on delivery, and helped others do the same. More importantly, I saw how even a small, clear mechanic can create emotional weight when it’s supported by tone, pacing, and consistency.

This jam gave me a clearer understanding of what it means to lead a game project. Not in theory, but in the real flow of messy teamwork, shifting scope, and creative tension. I’m more excited than ever to keep working on gameplay and system design, especially in projects where story and mechanics evolve together. I want to keep building games where systems speak, not just through plot, but through how they play.

I’d love to hear what other jam participants or gameplay/system designers think about the structure and lessons here.

Try our game here: Leech Protocol - post-jam version by Zugspitze