Death’s Season
Someone leaves a voicenote, from deep in the forest, begging for help. A woman answers.
A game by KSJ Studios // Kay Saint Joseph. Made for the Yogscast Jingle Gamejam. The full version is availble on Itch.io, playable in browser.
This was the first real game I made. The jam ran from the 1st of December to the 8th of December, 2025. All the assets (except the music and font) were made by me in the 7 or so days. I have since tinkered with it, just to add a little polish.
It didn’t score too well overall, but I wasn’t too surprised as horror games tend to have a specific audience. It also didn’t help that the game jam was for the festive season, rather than Halloween. There’s a couple of technical issues, but all things considered I’m really proud of it.
The comments from those who did like it were positive. The dialogue, atmosphere and story got high praise – these were I skills like to think I had before the jam started (as opposed to the pixel art and using Godot for a real project), so to receive these reviews was great.
Mother’s pixel art was my favourite – unfortunately it wasn’t staged well within the level, so players didn’t see it in its full glory.
The tight time limit forced me to stick with the first thing I did. There was no time for corrections or looking backwards. If it was done, it was in the game as it was. It also forced me to review the scope of the game. The initial plan included choices and multiple endings – these all got scrapped (though I have retrospectively added some of these back in).
Even the story, for instance, was a snap decision. The theme (being “if you can’t beat them, join them”) was announced at 5PM, and as soon as it came out I had to pick a game direction. By around 6:30PM I was programming and designing characters for the game I’d picked.
I was undoubtedly inspired by Ready or Not’s level Carriers of the Vine. There was a concern that the inspiration stretched into straight plagiarism – again though, once I had picked the game direction there was no time to go back. In the end, I think Death’s Season took enough of a different direction that those worries were unfounded.
I’d do a game jam again – maybe not December though, as doing a 9-5 then a 6-2 at Christmastime wasn’t ideal.
- Kay