It's time for Global Game Jam and this year the GBAtemp staff is attending!

If you haven't heard of it, Global Game Jam is an annual game jam event hosted in different venues all over the world to bring together the elements of creativity, collaboration and experimentation. At each site, participants gather to develop ideas, form small groups, create new, creative, innovative games, and present them to their peers and the global community, all in a limited time span.

At the beginning of the event participants are given a theme and the jammers are asked to create a game that in some way relates to this theme. It spans for 48 hours in each time zone, beginning at 5:00 PM on the start date, and ending at 5:00 PM two days later. This year it's from January 20th (today!) to 22nd.

If you'd like to try your hand at making games, this is a wonderful opportunity to try it out - there's no experience necessary, and you'll surely learn a lot about the game-making process in a single weekend. It's also a great way to meet a lot of other people who share your interest in games! Somewhere around 97% of past participants say they enjoyed the event and want to do it again! The website also allows you to play the games from past years and even download source code.

Go to www.globalgamejam.org and click on Locations, and search on the country to see if there's anything nearby - and then click the button to join, if it isn't full already (after creating a free account). If you can't join, stay tuned as we'll update regularly here about our experience!

Game on!

 

[Prans]

LIVE UPDATES:​

Day 1:

• On my way!
• Arrived! Event starts in less than 30min!

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• The secretary gave us magazines to check out in the meantime:

This one has has 2 dual pages! Neat! (It's a book on Warhammer 40k btw)​

• It's starting! The host is giving an intro to the jammers.

Damn pillar!​

• This year's theme is waves
• They've even got sandwiches to fuel us! Yum!

• Brainstorming ideas, lots of crazy and funny concepts

• Joined a team, working on our project now.
• Our team has laid out our plan for the game and the programmers will work on the math early tomorrow. We're calling it a day!

Day 2:

• Just got back for Day 2! Was -8°C on my way...brrr! Facial hair started to freeze...
• The programmers of the team I'm sticking are hard at work:

• Project update: progressing, working on controls

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• Sneak peek of the group's project :

• End of Day!

Day 3:

• The office hosting the event was live streaming the event yesterday; you can take a 360° look at people staring at their computer screen for 1h 26min below:

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• The jammers are wrapping up and uploading their projects.
• GGJ '17 is now officially over! All the teams have submitted their projects and gave a demo. Lots of interesting games made in just 48 hours by very talented teams and they are now back to catch some well-deserved sleep! Stay tuned to see more of the works!

Global Game Jam '17 Games:

Below are the games that the jammers in Budapest have concocted over a period of 48 hours. You can download and try each game (and more!) for yourself:

• Atlantris

In this two-player game with 8-bit like visuals and audio, a mere mortal (Player 1) is trying to evade the wrath of the God (Player 2) who is throwing tetromino-like blocks at you.

• Cozy Croc

Help the Cozy Croc to get home! You drop stones into the pond and the waves push Croc's little boat to the exit.

• I Bet You Can't Bat

This one cleverly uses the concept of bats' echolocation to guide your bat to the end of the level.

• Mr Cloud Against Mortality

In this endless runner, the player has two inputs: he can jump to avoid obstacles and he can activate his trusty Turkey companion's sound weapon with saying "itch" into the microphone.

• VR-EscapeFromTheDark

In this HTC Vive VR horror game, you take control of a blind and deaf girl trying to escape the horrors lurking in the dark with the help of your magic stick.

• WaveTunnel

Finally here's the game of the team I stuck around with. It's an endless runner where you control an orb venturing a tunnel that has to dodge the obstacles on the way. It doubles as a multiplayer game as you can connect a guitar and by plucking the correct strings, the matching colored obstacle will vanish! As you can see in the videos below, the menu is very basic due to the lack of a graphics member in the team but notice the Normal, Drunk and Super Drunk modes where your vision is blurred, making it hard to see the orb. You can also choose different speeds for a more challenging experience.

Normal Mode


Super Drunk Mode​

 

[MajinCubyan]

Wow, I had no idea such a thing existed. Got a few a couple hours away from me. Time to see if I can join anything. Thanks yo!

 

[Prans]

Wow, I had no idea such a thing existed. Got a few a couple hours away from me. Time to see if I can join anything. Thanks yo!

Sweet! Hope you can join Enjoy!

 

[boomario]

Will be participating in Brazil

 

[Issac]

There are 9 jams here in Sweden, but I had no idea this was happening at all Oh well! I hope you'll have fun!

 

[Vengenceonu]

How is this different from ludum dare?

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

How is this different from ludum dare?

The Ludum Dare is just done online and is considered a "competition" with "winners" (even though it's just a community vote and you don't actually win anything).

The Global Game Jam takes place in physical locations, people gather together at registered sites and create teams (usually of people who've never met) to create games within the allotted time period. There's no official votes, so it's not considered a competition and is just one of those things were people get together and create games for the hell of it.

I'm curious to see what @Prans's team comes up with!

 

[grossaffe]

I participated in this a few years ago. Was pretty fun.

 

[Prans]

I'm curious to see what @Prans's team comes up with!

Stay tuned, I'll share the details once we're done tomorrow

 

[Rusb]

I'm one of the organizers of the game jam in Barcelona, now It's 8 AM and a lot of people are sleeping xD we are 100 in total having much fun! (Lillie waifu on PC :3)

 

[Deleted User]

I look forward to what you guys make. Out of curiosity, what is your team using to make the game? Unity? UE4?

 

[Prans]

I look forward to what you guys make. Out of curiosity, what is your team using to make the game? Unity? UE4?

Unity

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

So whats your role in your team, Prans?

 

[Prans]

So whats your role in your team, Prans?

Game design, playtesting and most importantly, moral support

 

[seam]

looks horrible, lol

 

[XanLoves]

A friend just posted his gamejam project. I'm impressed!
Check it out: https://twitter.com/usuallydavid/status/823089617599602688

 

[Prans]

A friend just posted his gamejam project. I'm impressed!
Check it out: https://twitter.com/usuallydavid/status/823089617599602688

Hmm I think your friend participated in TinyTVJam, which is different from GGJ. But still nice job!

 

[grossaffe]

well come on, link us to your game!

 

[Prans]

well come on, link us to your game!

The wait is over! Check the updated post!