Spock, Magical Girls, Improv and Octopus

This past weekend was the Pre-Critical Hit 2015 game jam! The 48 hour-long game jam had the theme “hardware hacking & physical crafting” as a preview of this upcoming summer’s incubator.

This was a game jam for those passionate and curious about unusual interfaces, experimentations in craft, game design, electric circuitry, acting, soundscapes, augmented reality and virtual reality. On site teams hacked with Oculus Rift, Makey Makeys, and Sony Move Controllers, iPhone cameras, yarn, buttons, thread, and copper tape.

We were very pleased to see a wide variety of students and local artists attend the jam. On the floor were programmers, sound engineers, stage actors, students from Concordia’s own Computation Arts, Electro Acoustics, Computer Science, Film Animation, and Creative Writing undergraduate faculties. The vibrant mixture of fine arts and hardware technology enthusiasts created an electric atmosphere perfect for creativity and hard work!

The Spock food game: EAT LONG &PROSPER: "Why would you eat chocolate? It's illogical." pic.twitter.com/KozF9QhGNr

— Critical Hit (@CriticalHitMTL) March 1, 2015

Many of the jammers were jamming for the very first time – and some people were programming or creating circuits for the very first time. The cooperative atmosphere was really pronounced and a lot of jammers left the jam with skills they didn’t even know they could have! The prototypes at the end of the weekend were varied and superb – themes ranged from futuristic Star Trek culinary puzzles and movement improv to Magical Girl Olympics – and we even had a submarine augmented reality experience of Cthulhu-flavoured Octopus Hide and Seek.