What is this?

This is a field guide for building games in for example 48 hour game jams, created out of post-mortem data from the Ludum Dare Game Jams and The Game Jam Survival Guide by Christer Kaitila.

This playbook tries to strip large scale production methods and strips them down into tips which actually help in a game jam enviornment.

Who it’s for

Even if you’re solo or in a team of 2-5 people, in a time scale of 24-72 hour range, this is probably something for you.

How to use it

• New to Game Jams? Start with -> Game Jam Context, then work through -> Core Concepts
• You want some quick infos? Go straight to -> Guides
• You’re facing a mid-jam crisis? -> 48h Timeline or Anti-Patterns

Where the data comes from

Like already said, every best practice and anti-pattern in this playbook comes from game jam post-mortems, primarily the Ludum Dare 36 and 37. And ofcourse from The Game Jam Survival Guide by Christer Kaitila.

• Ludum Dare post-mortems - archived by Internet Archive, 28 Jan. 2021
• The Game Jam Survival Guide - Christer Kaitila, Packt Publishing, 2012
• The Scrum Guide - Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland, updated 2020
• Winning at New Products - Robert G. Cooper, Basic Books, 2017
• MoSCoW Prioritization in Software Development - Vijayakumar S., Prasad K. K. & Holla M. R., 2024
• Slack - James Shore, The Art of Agile Development, 2007–2021
• Sprint Velocity - Atlassian, 2026
• Managing Risks in Complex Projects - Project Management Institute
• Dissecting the Post-Mortem - Gamasutra, archived by Internet Archive

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