The teeny-tinyware Experience

Did you not have the chance to participate, or just want to relive those twenty-four hours? Luckily, this week's post is all about fall 2025's teeny-tinyware event!

teeny-tinyware was our first ever twenty-four hour game jam! Building on last year's tinyware, we were interested in seeing what games would come out underneath an even tighter deadline.

In the past, we've used themes to help provide inspiration; this time, we opted to give participants a constraint: to create a game that uses only two inputs.

Enough from us, though—you're better off hearing first hand accounts from those in attendance!

Participants thirty minutes into teeny-tinyware.

Team Reel It In: "It's a fishing game. It's multiplayer, so that means one button per person. The only inputs you need are to tap and hold."

Team Reel It In: You just got to hook that fish, spam your button to reel it in, and prove that you're the strongest fisherman around."

Team Combomancer: "Our game focuses on a wizard, and you press one of two buttons to start building a spell. When you press both of the buttons at the same time, it casts the whole spell.

Team Combomancer: There's also going to be enemies marching down a lane toward the wizard; if they reach the wizard, you instantly lose.

Team Mopey Mage Maggins: "We're making a two-player game where one player's a mage, and the other is a dragon. It alternates between who's shooting, and who's going up and down, trying to dodge the fireball."

Team Ossa: "Our game went surprisingly well! We scoped it pretty reasonably, and we had a decent prototype. Now, we're just playing it to see if it's fun or not."

Team Ossa: "By the end of the jam, we just had to apply the art assets and get the music in. From there, things went smoothly."

Team Mahjong Maestro: "Good, until the last two hours. FMOD and Git do not go very well together. Whenever I pulled, it would delete so much stuff. It was annoying. I would lose all my files, and wouldn't be able to connect events to anything."

Team Mahjong Maestro: "We had a working version that I backed up, and we had to repeatedly copy and paste the changes off of Discord. It was rough."

Team Reel It In early into teeny-tinyware.

Team Reel It-In: "It was pretty okay, despite the game constantly being scaled up. The most challenging part was expanding the water to be bigger, since I drew it on a set scale."

Team Reel It-In: "I liked being able to just kind of do whatever I want, since it was only twenty-four hours. It wasn't super stressful for me, because I know my own capabilities. I know when I can get things done and how quickly I can do them."

Team Mopey Mage Maggins: "To be honest, pretty smooth—I only have one other experience to compare it against though, since this was our second game ever. Our last project wasn't as smooth, since we hadn't learnt Unity at all. This game's development turned out so simple because of the constraint."

Team Mopey Mage Maggins: "It was our first time switching between scenes in game, though. It was a little tricky, but not too bad. We also had a hard time uploading the game for submission."

Team Mahjong Maestro accepting the award for game of the night.

Team Mahjong Maestro: "This is my last game jam at UCSD, so I'm really excited right now. I wanted to work with my friends, and I'm really glad I did."

Team Mahjong Maestro: "I had a lot of fun, and I'm very happy with the game. I'm glad other people liked it, too."

Thank you to everyone who participated in VGDC's events this quarter! We were happy to see so many people in attendance. If you're interested in providing feedback and contributing to the direction of this blog, consider filling out our feedback form!

Check back during week two of winter quarter for our next update—as always, thank you for reading!