Here's some of what we learned along the way:

TLDR :

• Don't take the theme too literally.
• Good (decent) UI, audio, FX etc matter more than you think.
• Write down tasks immediately (Kanban, notepad, piece of paper - doesn't matter - just do it)
• Basic settings are worth implementing.
• Physics WILL betray you :D
• Randomise your audio-effect sources.
• Engage with the community, don't be afraid to ask for help.
• Spend some time on your presentation layer (like itch.io page).
• Don't be afraid to take part in jams even when you have little experience - you can do it!

Longer version:

1. We started by sketching some loose ideas in Excalidraw and brainstorming how to make a decent game loop that would fit the theme (POWER). NGL our first ideas were pretty bad since we kept forcing concepts about electricity and energy - but Then we thought: what if it’s a climbing game like Icy Tower, and the player gains power by falling?
2. Rules required us to only use assets from Kenney and KayKit so we browsed through them and that's where the game's visual style clicked.
3. We got our first real experience with Compatibility renderer in Godot. We used it so the game would run smoothly in browsers although not sure if it was really necessary, but hey, learned something new.
4. We worked side-by-side on a call, sharing screens and discussing tweaks in "real time". We quickly realised that you have to write down all TODOs immediately otherwise (especially when we were getting tired) we started to forget things.
5. UI, sound, and FX turned out to be way more important than we expected. Once we kinda of polished them, the game instantly felt more fun and “finished.”
6. We struggled a bit with Rigidbody rotation and bouncing off objects. Went through several iterations, “magic numbers,” and lots of manual tweaking. Same with velocity. Physics can be tricky lol.
7. Add basic settings to your game. Playing other jam entries, we often wished we could adjust music/effects volume.
8. AudioStreamRandomizer is your friend! A few sound variations with different RNGs made a huge difference. Before that, audio fatigue set in fast.
9. We didn’t have time to make an in-game tutorial, so we explained the mechanics on our itch.io page and probably should have done it better. Looking at some feedback comments we've noticed that it wasn't clear enough.
10. The feedback we got was overwhelming! Some people even made YouTube videos of our game which felt surreal.
11. Since it was our first game on itch it didn't get indexed into the DB immediately. We barely got any traffic until the game got indexed. We actually had to write an email to itch support asking them to help us with the process