Scottish Game Jame: Post-Project Reflection

The game jam is done at least. After a weekend of fun and learning and meeting new friends, I finally got a good night's sleep and am ready to look back on how things went.

Concept art of our game, but the finished product looks essentially like this.

Our game was a 2D running game in which the hero, Denizen Pop (the Ultimate Mare) must escape being turned into burger meat by a wall of... well, of burger meat. She runs across a surreal landscape, collecting carrots (speed boosts) and foals (bonus points) while avoiding barbecues, hedges, and onions.

The game was rather simple, and the gameplay pretty unoriginal. We didn't have a designer on the team and I think that made things much more difficult for us as a group. None of us were really "idea people" and even this simple idea took us longer to decide on than most of the teams. However, we were able to completely finish our game with time to spare and limited stress, so perhaps this simple idea was best.

For programming, we used Unity. I had never used this engine (or indeed, any engine) before and it was a wonderful experience, especially because Dave was a Unity veteran and was able to teach me. Luckily I was fairly familiar with C#, so it was our scripting language of choice. I was very glad to have Dave's guidance in finagling Unity to 2D, as it wasn't particularly intuitive.

Overall, I learned an absolute ton, made some great new friends, and had a blast. This was an excellent experience, and I suggest anyone interested in making games definitely get involved with a game jam as soon as possible. With only 48 hours of your time (or less, depending on the jam length) you'll end up with a completed game, which generally looks better in a portfolio than an incomplete one no matter how fancy. You'll learn to work with others, often both others of your discipline as well as cross-discipline. You may even learn a new technology, as I did. You'll make new contacts in the industry. Most importantly, you'll have a great time and make memories that will last a lifetime.

If you want to play my game, you can download it here: http://globalgamejam.org/2013/denizen-pop-ultimate-mare