Companion Plant: A Game Jam Review
Recently, we were nominated for the Narrative Design Awards 2026 with our entry Companion Plant, so we reviewed the jam to understand what went well and where we can improve.
We went into the jam with three people: Sarah and Emilia from Code Pergola, and Cursa, an independent author. After a brief introduction we decided it would be fun to make a game together.
Coordination & planning
At first we approached the jam in a very unstructured manner, thinking we should not overdo our planning to remain flexible. This was a short game jam meant to be fun and creative after all. However, we quickly realized that we were lacking clarity: oftentimes someone was unsure what to do, what the others on the team were up to or what the big picture of the game looked like.
Soon enough we scheduled a planning session. Mapping out all the features that Cursa would need to write a story helped us to constrain the scope. Thus, we knew how much we had to implement on the technical side and what assets to produce for the game to be minimally playable.
This was a tremendous help, but we still ended up with some crunch on the day of the deadline having to stretch our internal cut-off time. Submitting around midnight was not ideal, but we got to the finish line. 😅
Responsibilities & boundaries
Another point worth noting were the boundaries between our tasks. Sarah was in charge of the programming, Emilia spend her time drawing and recording sound effects and Cursa drafted the story outline and wrote the dialogue. The game design on the other hand was a shared responsibility, in which we all participated.
There were some dependencies between us. For example, Emilia needed to know the story outline in order to understand what assets to draw first. Sarah needed to know which features to implement. Cursa needed creative constraints to know how to write the story. We discovered these dependencies mostly as we went along.
The boundary between code and art was blurry. Since level design was mostly done in Godot, Emilia was also working on the code integrating her assets into the game. So she created a little botanical garden of camomiles for Sarah. However, Sarah had to rework them as some of the required gameplay aspects were missing.
Initially, Cursa was working on the story by herself. It is not uncommon for writers to retreat into a creative cave until they are done. In our case, it meant that Emilia and Sarah were not aware of the details of the story, such as the objects on the desk or the kind of interactions available to the player.
To alleviate this issue, Cursa gave us an early story outline. This was not originally intended to be read by anyone but her, causing slight confusion on our side. Nonetheless, sharing it gave us the guidance we needed to work on our part.
Conclusion
Overall, we consider this jam a success. We released our first tiny game as Code Pergola, had a productive creative collaboration with Cursa and our game was even nominated for the award!
Sarah deepened her understanding of Godot, digging into best practices and building a solid foundation for future games. Emilia experienced a change of pace by focussing almost entirely on art and design, without doing much programming.
The collaboration with an author like Cursa made our game's story really come to life. The protagonist's interactions and their friend's one-sided conversations encourage the player to think about the background and meaning of the story, turning them into an active participant instead of a passive listener.
Collaboration within the team also went fairly smoothly. We received timely feedback on our work from each other, both in writing and on regular calls.
Finally, we were able to take away valuable lessons on how we can improve for future projects. A minimum of planning is required, even in a short, informal project like a game jam. As a result, there should be little uncertainty about the requirements and responsibilities of individual team members.
If this post made you curious about the actual game, check out Companion Plant on itch.io!
We are always happy about feedback or questions. We are also available for hire, when you find yourself in need of a small development team. In either case, just drop us an email: