Making a VR game and winning at GGJ

So I finally have something interesting to speak about in my life.

For the past few days (29. 1. - 1. 2. 2026.) me (and my team) have been making a game for our GGJ 2026 entry at Novska, Croatia. It was pretty fun experience working with my friends and making a functional game in those two days.

If you didn't know Global Game Jam, or GGJ for short, is a global event that lasts 48 hours. Participants join Game Sites and there they show up in real and program at that location for 48h. The Site at Novska is the biggest one in Croatia with 127 participants but we were split into two categories, those under 18 and over and I was with those under 18.

The theme was "Mask" and even tho everyone else at the sight was making a normal 2D or 3D game I wanted to challange myself for once and grow my experience so I decided to make a VR game. Even tough I wasn't a solo player and was there as a team of four, it was more like a team of two where one did 90% and other did 10%. The last two were there to bring me Monsters when I need them (maybe they did few things, but barely). I mean we are all friends and I went there knowing I will be doing most of the work so I also decided it will be a VR game, for the most part due to me really wanting to make a VR game for some time now, but standing out in front of judges also contributed.

After I decided on whole structure of the game which is a Horror Stealth game we came up with the name Azazel which is the name of jewish demon, and the story goes as follows:

You find yourself within the catacombs full of demon pawns who all want to sacrifice you to their lord.
Entire time you can't help but feel another presence within you, but it doesn't feel malicious.
Escaping won't be easy since you are no match for demon pawns. They can kill you in one sweep, but they are stupid.
If you could put on a mask they wear, surely they wont notice if you don't get too close, just gotta watch out for evil within the mask not to takeover control.

To get more technical the game was made in Godot using helper tools from godot-xr-tools and developed for PICO 4 Ultra (but it should work on Meta headsets as well). The map and mask model was gotten from Fab marketplace and converted to Godot using awesome Unreal to Godot Exporter, font from Google Fonts and audio for the most part from Ovani and the rest from all over the internet. Awesome UI textures, game logo and title textures were made by my super talented artist friend in like a hour as for the enemy model it was downloaded from Mixamo (where we also took animations from).

After 48 hours of programming, designing, debugging, testing and researching, of which I slept 3 hours, the judges pressed the bell and time was up. For some reason everything went smoothly. I guess it was because I did most of the work so I knew how to organize and I set up a working template project beforehand, but at no point did I feel like I was behind schedule. I guess at the very end it got a bit tight since I forgot we will be presenting the game, and there was 3 minute limit to present a game that had ~15 min of gameplay in it we needed to make a teleport system which took more time than intended, but honestly, from the organization standpoint, it was a total win.

One of my team members was playing the game while I was presenting, and I wont lie, even tough I practiced everything I would say the moment I took a step on that stage I forgot everything. I was shaking and sweating, but by some miracle words started coming out of my mouth and they didn't stop till time was up. I improvised here and there, tried some jokes, but I also stuttered and repeated myself multiple times which is why I'll be surprised later..

After around 30 submissions were presented It came time to announce the winners. First came the special elements winners which are best presentation, best gameplay and best graphic. Somehow with that shitshow of my presentation we won the best presentation elements. Keep in mind that these segments include all of the participants, not only ones within my category so this was completely unexpected! Then after the winners of other two elements were announced it came time to announce the winners of the game jam by category. They said something about how it is judged by fun factor + presentation + the work you put in, but to be completely honest I didn't listen at all. I suspected we will be at the leaderboard looking at other games during the jam, and I was expecting 3rd place, just maybe 2nd after we got that best presentation award. The winners were announced from last (3rd place) to first (1st place). The 3rd place was taken by team next to us with their game Villa Oscura. Now I got my hopes down since I was most confident this is where our game would place, but there was still chance we could get 2nd place. After a short photography session it came time to announce 2nd place. The main judge pulled out a paper and the second place got the game...    Cursed Mask..  Well that's it.. At least I got a special elements award.           Anyways we won the first place. 🦗🦗🦗 

WTF?!

HOW? BUT THE GAME WAS SO MID! LIKE ENEMY AI WAS SHIT IT RAN LIKE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION AND 80% WAS A WALKING SIMULATOR?? AND THAT WON?

anyways I guess the message here is trust in yourself or something but I couldn't care less MOM LOOK I'M NOT A TOTAL FAILURE MOM!!!

So yeah that was my expirience at GGJ-2026. If you want to play the game (please don't you're wasting time) this is the link to submission page.

Thanks for reading and meow.