Game Jam – Friday

This post is gonna be a little bit out of date, but whatever…

Last friday I participated in the Uppsala University Campus Gotland Game Jam. which is basically an event in which all the students pair toghether and make games in a short time. The tools that were allowed to use was Game Maker and seemingly most graphics-oriented programs.

I paired of with two friends and a guy I had just met in the passing. We were a total of four people, three of those were programmers (me included) and one was a graphics-student. Also, we only had two computers, so while Valdemar (the graphics guy) was busy making some sweet graphics I made the game itself. the game could be any genre but it had to be connected to the two words Everyday and Doom.

The useful thing that the instructors told us was that it you should make a simple game and then polish that simplicity. Of course we did this exactly (not) and decided to make a platformer starring a guy in his morning gown getting his newspaper while the world is coming to an end. It was quite simple starting off, but it eventually became a rather difficult task (turns out the physics of a platformer aren’t easy to get down, even in Game Maker). While the end result wasn’t perfect it did feel pretty fun. there was however a glitch in the final level that made all the enemies sink through the ground, but my teammates jump laughed it off…

In the end we didn’t win any prices on the show floor. The three winners were:

Best interpretation was the game Doom’s Date (I think that was the name…) which was a dating simulator featuring Doctor Doom from the Marvel comics. It was hilarious!

Best Excecution was Snajigel Simulator (Yes, that was it’s actual name) about playing as a snail trying to cross the road. One reason as to why it won (I think) was that they actually made the box art for it with pitches like: “Explore a Huge Open World” and “Hours of campaign Missions” (that last one might actually be true…).

The final winner was in the category of “Most Fun” and was a game called Lunchtime (I think) and it played kinda sorta like a space-shooter. It was the game that I spent the most time around. You played as a guy who tried to deliver food to Satan (at least I think that was it). The game was actually really hard but had a nice feeling of “Just one more try!” that made me play forever. In total only about five or six people completed it, two of those were on the development team (one was me :D).

So… we didn’t win but I felt like I actually learned a lot from this event and I am definitly going to participate next time.

~♪

(Oh, and if you’d like to test the game out, heres a DL)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vbxhn6tn4u2t2wj/GJam_YouGotMail!-Default-1.0.0.0.exe

(Use Arrow keys to steer and press Z to jump and X to attack. You can press Up and X to throw upwards)