Hello and welcome!

You've had some good tips there already from @Walop@sopuli.xyz but I definitely want to emphasise the "have fun" part! Pace yourself, ask for help when you need it, and if you start to feel like you're burning out and losing the fun please take a break.

If you get something submitted by the end, great, but if you overrun a little bit you should still be proud of what you made.

The biggest advice I have, which you've probably heard before but it bears repeating, is to make something small. When you think you've whittled down your idea to the simplest it could possibly be? Simplify it some more. Remember if there's time left at the end of the jam you can always add more stuff, but overscoping from the start will stop you from finishing anything at all.

And on that note! Get a victory condition and game ending in as soon as possible. That way you've got a full start-to-end experience that could technically be submitted and would work, even if something unexpectedly takes you away from the jam.

You didn't say which engine or anything you're planning to use but on a jam-specific note, in their Discord you can ping mentors in each engine with e.g. @unity or @godot if your fellow jammers aren't able to answer something you're stuck on. I'm in there too (same username as here), technically only a Unity mentor but I've been learning Godot so will be keeping an eye on questions in that too.

Oh and p.s. we'd love to see what you make! You can update here, or I'll be starting off a weekly "what are you working on?" thread so keep an eye on that too 🙂

And p.p.s please use version control.