Thursday afternoon, the day before the start of Global Game Jam 2013, I didn’t own a laptop and had no way of participating in the event. By Thursday evening, I’d acquired a decent mac book pro at a very decent price, and still wasn’t planning on making anything for the jam. What I thought would happen was that I would spend the weekend asking other people what they were making and taking photos and maybe working on my Pixelles homework. Well, as it turned out, I did all three of those things, but I also ended up joining a team and participating in my first game jam.
After participating in a brainstorm session, I ended up in a team of five that had never worked together before. Mathieu Montreuil handled programming in Unity. Charlotte Fisher made textures and did 3D modeling. Sahar Homami, also a 3D modeler, made our main character. Carolyn Jong (yes, that Carolyn Jong!) made 3D models, textures and did sound design. As for me, Charlotte and Carolyn were kind enough to teach me the basics of making textures and I made the floor and wall textures, as well as doing a bit of self-taught sound design myself and creating the game page. There are a lot of free, strange noises out there.
We all worked together on problems of concept and story, and I think that overall we made a very good team! It came down to the wire though, and we had a small problem with our ending when the first judge played through.
The game? Legacy. You can read all about it on the Global Game Jam page that we made for it! (And even play it!)
The atmosphere at the Game Jam was a blast to work in. People were supportive, kind, and above all, fun-loving! For someone who went in there not expecting to make anything myself, I really got caught up in the experience. Here‘s a list of all the games that were uploaded from Concordia. One team, Will Robinson and Jason Begy, actually made a board game called “The Body Politic” – a bit harder to upload, but you can still read about it on their page and I think that the resources for making your own copy are also there.
Like I said before, I did end up doing some of that journalistic stuff like tweeting, taking photos, and asking people questions about their experience. You can view the tweets on my twitter account. As for the photos, well, here they are!
Mathieu Montreuil, our programmer, showing off our game to a judge.
John’s game is being judged!
Site organizer and judge stand-in Jonathan Lessard plays a game.
Players testing G-g-g-ghost!
Still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after 40-some hours!
My game jam team! My station is the empty one!
Will Robinson and Jason Begy with their game, The Body Politic.
The game pieces from The Body Politic.
Arcade Royale is a fun way to test your game jam game!
A brainstorming session from the beginning of the event.
