Hi folks. Sorry for the extended break over summer. I took a couple of weeks off, then found it a bit tough to get back into the groove. But schools is back now and the traffic is back to terrible in the morning, so I suppose it’s about time that I pulled myself together and got back to posting these.
There’s not a whole lot of news on the Level Squared front at the moment – I might have something in the next few weeks, but for the time being we’re keeping our heads down and getting stuff done.
But, one thing I do want to talk about is Global Game Jam!
For anyone not in the know, a game jam is an event where people get together to make a game. They can be limited by theme, or time, or materials or locations, or nothing at all. It’s sort of a risk free opportunity to throw something together, and see if it works, and also to meet and maybe work with a bunch of new people.
Global Game Jam (GGJ) is distinguished by the fact that it is held simultaneously in a bunch of countries all around the world (the hint is in the name…). It has a specified theme and a hard time limit of 48 hours.
The theme this year was Transmission.
Our team decided to get out of the building to do our brainstorming session. There was going to be plenty of time spent in there over the next couple of days anyway! So we headed off to the pub for a couple of hours of hard thinking.
The idea that we came up with revolved around the concept of sending social media posts using a language that you did not understand. From that we built up a story about an astronaut sending out messages to surrounding planets and only knowing if they were saying good or bad things by the reactions of the planets.
And with our concept in hand, we returned to the site and get down to work.
I took on the roles of designer and producer, roles that I feel a lot more confident putting my hand up for after a couple of years at uni. Usually I have a lot of work to do early in the project, then run around putting out spot fires and dealing with emergencies as they crop up. But this time the team I was with were pretty much on top of everything. Once the initial design was worked out I wrote up a Design Document and helped out with keeping track of where everything was.
I had our official Global Game Jam page all built and ready to go well before we were due to upload. Our task list was well in hand (even if the art team and the programming team wanted to use it in different ways…), and there weren’t any overflow tasks that needed dealing with.
At times I felt a little superfluous even.
So in the end our game was built and uploaded on time without too much panic or wailing.
And the game we made was LonelyAstronaut95.
You can play it in your web browser right here: danscode.net/LonelyAstronaut/
Or you can download a version from here: danscode.net/LonelyAstronaut95.zip
OR you could come along to the Arcade tonight from 6pm and play this as well as around 30 other games that were made at the jam.
It’s good to be back and writing again. There’s going to be a lot of learning this year, so there’s going to be plenty for me to discuss.
Hope you all stick around.