Ben X

Game Jams

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I really like the categories for rating games:

Overall
Audio
Visual
Romance
Psychedelia
Lonesomeness
The Void
Shootouts

 

I submitted my game, though there was a lot of stuff I didn't have time for. All you can do now is shoot and throw dynamite at other players, though I did code (and remove) a couple sorta awkward grappling hooks. The gravity is kinda fun though, I think? I also didn't have time to get sound in, so instead I put a link to a sweet Cowboy Bebop track in the description. Close enough? http://dinosaursssssss.itch.io/high-moon

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...here's SpennyDubs handily defeating me at my own game:

 

97OtB1z.png

 

 

edit: Seems like itch.io recently added a page showing past/current/future jams in a nice timeline. Interestingly, it also shows the number of games submitted to each jam. The most popular one  was the Flappy Jam at nearly 800 games (!!!), beating out the next most popular, Candy Jam, by about 350 submissions. Kinda wonder if their numbers are so much higher because of publicity, or just because it's relatively easy to make a flappy bird or candy crush clone.

 

http://itch.io/jams

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Eh, I don't put much stock in the rating system. And honestly I find its presence in these jams kinda counter to what I consider to be their purpose, which to me is learning and experimentation. I get that there needs to be a way to pick the best games, but exposing the raw numbers everywhere makes it feel more like much more of a competition than I like. I don't think it's in most peoples minds that they should be trying to beat each other, but I worry that the system encourages it.

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Forgot to post what I submitted for Space Cowboy Game Jam. It is called The Last Job and I plan on finishing it. I spent most of the weeks writing a Twine parser and then the bespoke content was just too much for a single day.

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I spent most of the weeks writing a Twine parser and then the bespoke content was just too much for a single day.

 

Going a little back to my earlier post, this is sort of the best part of jams though, isn't it? Now you have a Twine to Unity parser! That's awesome, and I imagine will be incredibly useful again. Making that little piece of tech or fucking around with that weird idea you never had an excuse to try, that eventually grows into something else is a much bigger win than some arbitrary number score on itch.io. 

 

There might not be a lot of content in your submission, but I bet a Twine -> Unity tool would do well on the asset store :)

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Going a little back to my earlier post, this is sort of the best part of jams though, isn't it? Now you have a Twine to Unity parser! That's awesome, and I imagine will be incredibly useful again. Making that little piece of tech or fucking around with that weird idea you never had an excuse to try, that eventually grows into something else is a much bigger win than some arbitrary number score on itch.io. 

 

There might not be a lot of content in your submission, but I bet a Twine -> Unity tool would do well on the asset store :)

 

It's super weird but my first thought would be to give it away for free. Especially since it is a tool used to interface with another free tool? I mean, I'm all for being able to thrive making games but I feel super uncomfortable asking people to pay for something that ought to be free.

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It's super weird but my first thought would be to give it away for free. Especially since it is a tool used to interface with another free tool? I mean, I'm all for being able to thrive making games but I feel super uncomfortable asking people to pay for something that ought to be free.

 

This is an attitude I support. :) (Not that I inherently oppose the asset store, but sometimes I think Unity users are too quick to want to be Unity Tool Developers instead of Game Developers. =P)

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My school had a game jam based on blame culture within a health care context. My friends and I more or less made a twine game for it but we won! I'm not actually super happy with the results, but its the first game I've made start to finish, and the actual experience of having people play it, and then tell us that they were as into it as they were was a terrific feeling.

 

http://www.errordiary.org/?page_id=9031

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My school had a game jam based on blame culture within a health care context. My friends and I more or less made a twine game for it but we won! I'm not actually super happy with the results, but its the first game I've made start to finish, and it was cool to see it recognized.

 

http://www.errordiary.org/?page_id=9031

 

I thought it was great. I think that computer games are especially suited for expressing triage; optimization with narrative consequences is typically an accurate generalization for games I've enjoyed.

What are you not satisfied with?

And in case you are wondering how it went

I didn't stop to help anyone until the man was bleeding. As I understand it, the priorities are

1.Stop the bleeding

2.Make sure they can breathe

3. Keep them warm

So I thought it was urgent. Then someone had flatlined, so I was like "yeah, I think I need to help them." AND my patient ended up living! So I feel happy about my performance.

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Ludum Dare 30 is this weekend, from Friday to Sunday. I haven't done an LD before, but I've been meaning to join and I've been slacking on making some games recently so I'm gonna do this one! I'll probably be working in Unity, and maybe now that I have a basic understanding of modelling I'll make something in 3d this time? My guess is that if I go down that road I'll spend all 48 hours making some abysmal models but we'll see how inspiration strikes when the theme is finalized.

 

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/

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Here's an interesting one, Gamemaking Frenzy: Barfcade

 

  • Your game must be a head-to-head simultaneous two-player game. 
  • Your game must run on Windows and use WASD + SPACE for player one andARROW-KEYS + ENTER for player two as input in order to be considered for inclusion on the BARFCADE cabinet.
  • It must have a short duration, 30 seconds or less, resulting in a WIN or LOSE for each player (we'll be keeping score offstage).
  • After the match is over the game must QUIT AUTOMATICALLY.
  • The game must in some way be about FOOD, COOKING, EATING, or BARFING (or any combinations thereof).
  • THERE WILL BE ONE SECRET INGREDIENT TO BE ANNOUNCED BY THU AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JAM!
  • You will have plenty of time to work on your game, and you may enter MULTIPLE GAMES! As many as you want!

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The CloneJam looks exciting to me because I'm a fan of some of these developers and curious who the others are.

http://jams.gamejolt.io/clonejam

I haven't been able to make a game in three days yet, but this might be a good way to try. Gawd, I would be so good at making computer games if I did studies of all these developer's styles for the next year. I think this may be my jam.

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Here's an interesting one, Gamemaking Frenzy: Barfcade

 

 

Woah! Yay! I came to the Idle Forums to see if anyone else had done barfcade and I'd already played your game even. I liked it a lot. It was pretty fun. It reminded me of Muscle Cat. 

I made one too with my roommate. It's our first collaboration. http://madjackalope.itch.io/pistolshrimpvsninjashrimpgo

Q75LAO.jpg

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I just saw someone on Twitter suggest that the resulting games from game-jams should be available as bundles after the game is complete. I think this is a fabulous idea. 50 Short Games has shown me how much more digestible small games are when bundled nicely.

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7 Day FPS is November 8-15 which is pretty soon, and this year there's also a 7 hour version on Nov 1st, which is even sooner. Some cool stuff has come out of 7DFPS, like SUPERHOT, Receiver, and Catlateral Damage; I'm planning on participating, but I'll probably mostly use the jam as an excuse to sit down and learn UE4.

 

http://7dfps.com/2014.php

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Ooh, that might be a good excuse to make my slenderman rip off game where instead of slenderman it's Jimmy Carr that's stalking you. I doubt I'll have a bunch of time to dedicate to it but it should be simple enough to bash out for the week one.

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