Hi, I’m Pruthvi, one of the game’s designers. It's been a little less than a week since GGJ2025 has concluded. So the team and I wanted to share what it was like making Sorry to BRB in retrospect. Our thoughts on some of the playtesting issues here might give you a perspective on how we made choices with our design, what we tried doing, what we thought about, and what we couldn’t solve. Read on if you’re curious!

The problems we ran into (and seemingly couldn't solve)

We had some interesting moments play out during our playtests. Some glaring issues came out; a few surprised us, and a few I expected but intentionally left in to see what the reaction would be.

“I have a Bubble Blow set. But I have a small bubble left, and no Bubble Grow set. My opponent has a big bubble. What’d be the point of playing? I already lost.”

The assumption here is that the opponent would not call the supposedly losing player’s bluff. However, this is a small bit of strategy we wanted to offer you. Bluffing isn’t just something you do in the game, but calling your bluff is also something you can expect from your opponent. So it technically opens up the “how the turntables” opportunity that feels smooth if you execute it just right.

“When I began the game, I drew a Bubble Blow set. By Round 2, my opponent played a Bubble Grow set, gaining him a large bubble, while I still lacked a bubble. I played the Bubble Blow set to deflate his bubble. He called my bluff. But I don’t have a bubble, so it can’t backfire. What happens now?”

To control the potential resource-hoarding abuse, we urged players to create a bubble by Round 3 lest they lose the game automatically. Shortly after this scenario, we changed it to Round 2. However, this doesn’t solve the problem itself. The problem remains in the game, and indeed makes for an odd scenario to find yourself in when playing the game.

“If I called out my opponent’s bluff, and it turns out they lied, my reward is to take the cards they played. But why won’t their bubble deflate too?”

We wanted to keep the exchange fair; assuming you can only draw two cards from the Draw Pile, if the opponent’s bubble deflates, the opponent’s chance to lose by the next turn is 100%. This isn’t part of the rules, but it should’ve been. (I recommend players reading this post consider this an official rule for the time being.)

“If a player could count cards, wouldn’t they be able to accurately tell what card would come next?”

Indeed. One solution was to introduce a separate deck of cards that modified the state of the game a little; either the player draws three cards from the Resource Pile, or draws a single card from the Special Pile. We haven’t tried this yet.

“Drawing 3 cards mostly keeps both playing looping through their bubbles unless someone either uses a Bubble Blow set, or bluffs. Which makes the experience boring. Drawing 2 cards eventually forces you to run out of resources that someone will surely lose, which makes the experience of attacking extremely stressful. In a game about survival, we’re putting players in a defensive mindset, yet encouraging mechanics that require aggression. There’s a mismatch in what we want to achieve with the game experience.”

This was the glaring issue I found with the game. A big component contributing to this huge problem was the fact players had to discard cards and use cards to maintain the bubble, leaving them with only a single card by the end. This meant there was only one strategic element to succeeding in the game.

So even if the game on the surface seems fun and interesting, this problem takes away any depth we wish for the game to have. We’d have to do a fair bit of deep-rooted surgery to figure out the best way to handle it. But it is indeed a problem that, for us, couldn’t be fixed in just a few hours.

And finally... this bit comes from me: we didn't do that great a job with handling the assets itself. Although we spent a fair bit of time getting the physical version played in the jam site, we completely forgot to account for how people online would get their hands on the assets in the first place. I hope the current assets are good enough; it's not print-and-play-ready, but it certainly could be. Down the line, I think planning for assets to be print-and-play-ready will do wonders, and not add any work on your part. (This is not to say the assets will not be updated in the future; once I get the time to get a P&P version ready, I will re-edit this post to reflect the change.)

These are all the problems we ran into... and have not-very-great solutions for. As such, if we ever choose to take the game’s development any further, I’ll be sure to address an update on them in another post.

The value of doubt

Processes are different for a lot of people, so I won’t dive into them here. Instead, I’ll explore some reassurances my team and I experienced.

Doubt was persistent the entire time we spent making the game, especially when we were thinking of ideas. But we kept in mind what we wanted you, our player, to say after you finished playing our game. We kept in mind the constraints in place. We kept in mind what genre, what player goals, and what reactive experience we wanted to dive into. We kept in mind that people needed to play the game first to affirm our guesstimations. We were firm with what we wanted. Eventually, our odd, disconnected ideas evolved like Pokemon, and we came away with what you see now. In retrospect, this is what patience looked like. Not only for the process, but also for ourselves. And much of it had to do with validating our doubts; to make it work with the process, and not against it.

“Staying threaded” became a crucial trait, too. I realize now that we unconsciously didn’t allow our minds to wander to random ideas when brainstorming. Every time we pitched something, it incorporated the elements we were working with. I think that was perfect because it helped us anchor ourselves to elements we genuinely liked. I know, from a personal and professional standpoint, that a random brainstorm leads you nowhere. Honing in on what we wanted and digging through each idea to see how they represented that was a lot more productive than just spitballing ideas to see which one sticks to the wall.

These two bits of experience aren’t new to us, but it did reassure us that (almost) any idea can work, if you can catch irrelevant or out-of-scope ideas in your brainstorms before it seeps into your design. And if some do squeak through? You’ll need to find it in yourself to cut ‘em out and dunk ‘em in the trash. It’s thanks to that that we have a game in hand… quite literally.

We also didn’t care much for whether we were making a game that was similar to, the same as, close to, almost like, pretty much like, sort of like… someone else’s game. And even if we did, there’s alway an opportunity to add another twist to it. The mindset that every game we saw had an interesting challenge, a potential problem, a missing component helped us keep an open mind about making it in our own vision anyway. We didn’t subscribe to the idea of innovation… and we ended up surprising ourselves as a result, by crafting an interesting, and genuinely fun game. This, I think, was because we entered the jam with the simplest expectations: to have fun with the team, and to love what we make. I imagine the team got a whole lot more than what they bargained for. (I know I did!)

Our only advice to you as a team

The heaviest bags to carry are under your eyes. And as much as the lack of sleep is a running gag in jams (and in the industry, really), every joke has a morbid grain of truth in it.

For one, running on fumes would not have helped us clear out the mental fog of war to tame what dark arithmancy laid before our path to create this game. For two, we wouldn’t have made the most of our Saturday outside of the jam; this is particularly important because you need to get away from the work to let it incubate in your mind, and let your mind brew up the Eureka! moment you're looking for. And for three, it is unfair — both to the team and to your team’s game — to neglect your health.

Producing a good thing requires refuelling yourself so that you can continue producing the good thing consistently. So… eat well, don’t junk, hydrate with strictly water, go for frequent walks, and — for the love of Nidra — get above six good hours of sleep!