Ben X

Game Jams

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I'm a little bit lost on this one. I have a really good idea for a game that fits the theme of "twins", and it's something I think I can make within the time limit; but it doesn't fit the knockoff/bootleg theme at all and I can't think of an adequate way of shoehorning it in. 

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I'm so pumped for duplicade. I came back to Idle Thumbs forums after being away for a long time just to see who else was doing it. (life stuff happened and also I'm really bad at using forums, and my podcast machine is broken so I haven't been listening to Idle Thumbls lately. I am sorry! )

I did barfcade last year and really enjoyed it. 

If you live in Austin hit me up. Saturday a bunch of us are meeting IRL to work on our game jam games together. I'm working on like 3 or 4 different games with people. I'm super pumped. 

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I have no idea at all yet so I'm trying to run the brain machine this weekend. The requirements are a little odd, to base it on an existing IP but abstract it away so it's ideally not even recognisable. I should probably think about specific IPs to copy and then imagine ways of abstracting them into 30 second games. I'm currently thinking the opposite way around and not doing as well.

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I've been having fun creating these fake Bubble Bobble assets. Now I just stare at the code until the game is magically not boring and obscure anymore!

post-26597-0-91266700-1442353544_thumb.png

hubblegarble.mp3

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Was just checking out the amazing Duplicade entries on Itch and thought it would be fun to peek in here and see what the chatter was.

This is very pleasing! Well done, well done!

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The next Klik of the Month Klub (#99) looks like it's going to be fun. It's pretty much always fun actually, but this particular imbroglio is especially entertaining for me.
It's on October 17th, a two-hour jam that sometimes goes over. I usually hang out in the chat around the appointed time and it's really casual and... I just get a lot out of these monthly events.

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I imagine most of us are busy with Wiz Jam, but if you're feeling adventurous Ludum Dare 34 started an hour ago: http://ludumdare.com/compo/2015/12/09/welcome-to-ludum-dare-34/

 

"The Theme for Ludum Dare 34 is... A TIE!?! Two button controls AND Growing! Pick your favourite, or use both"

https://twitter.com/ludumdare/status/675495354406592512

 

I really like LD and wish I could do this one, but between wiz jam and my other game and social engagements there's no way it'll happen. 48 hour solo jams are my jam.

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I saw some people tweet about Locus Jam (hosted by Porpentine) which seems like a neat idea. I've been thinking about doing something similar in order to get better at figuring out lighting and architecture and...I donno, level flow? I donno if there's a technical term for that. Anyway I'd like to do this and it seems cool.

 

 

Make a place. Something specific and discrete, like one room in a structure, or a single fixed perspective. It can be graphical or text or diorama or desktop folders or anything you desire.


Examples
Polly Pocket, The Big City, Chime Shrine, 10 Seconds in Hell


Thoughts
What is idiosyncratic about the place, that would be diminished if it were universalized to fit inside a larger work?
Are you trying to tell a story through the place or just focus on the feel?
What can you see from the place that you can't reach?

 

https://itch.io/jam/locusjam

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Interesting concept. I'll brainstorm on it. Maybe be a good chance to practice some more low poly aesthetics.

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This is a great idea for a jam involving something I suck at, but really want to practice. Gonna try pull it together, but I expect I'll struggle with making it honest and stylistically cohesive.

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Anyone else do Global Game Jam this weekend? I had a pretty good weekend working with 2 folks who I didn't really know (I'd met one briefly at a dev event but didn't remember his name). We were a team of 3, me (programmer / unity implementer), an artist, and a writer/designer. Perfect team size I think, though having an audio person woulda been nice. We had one on Friday night but he no showed the next 2 days.

 

So, in Poke the Bear you're a bears roommate. He's kinda stuck in his routine, so you need to see what he does every day, then move his stuff around to get him to try new things so he'll let you throw a party. For example, he normally works on a Gundam model every night; you can hide it and replace it with a flute so he can rediscover his love of music. Every action he does (unless its part of his routine) affects his 'willingness' and 'frustration' and you need to find the activities that he's into.

 

Anyway here's the game and a gif:

 

http://www.funghost.com/pokethebear

 

http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/poke-bear

 

9zB4F8m.gif

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Were all the writer's duties up front? I would imagine that everything would get written in the first stage and the majority of the time-allotment would go to art, scripting, sound, and implementation.

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Were all the writer's duties up front? I would imagine that everything would get written in the first stage and the majority of the time-allotment would go to art, scripting, sound, and implementation.

 

It was certainly front loaded; I think he spent a lot of time up front defining all the possible interactions / outcomes and how they affected the game system before getting into the writing. Later on he did end up doing some art and sound, then rewriting some dialogue when it became clear that some features weren't gonna make it.

 

He was primarily a Game Maker user and honestly now I wish we'd run with that instead of Unity; we were doing 2D anyway and it woulda been good to learn it from someone who knows what they're doing.

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IMG_20160312_095307_small.jpg
 
I was on the recent train jam and, along with my friend and a cool Argentinian audio guy, made a strange IF game called Cerebellar. It's on itch.io here, and we wrote up a short post about it on our website. Just a note that it's a 2-player local multiplayer experience, so it's best to find someone to play it along with you. It should take about ten minutes to play.

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