8 minute read
GLOBAL GAME JAM
GLOBAL GAME JAM
Ten Delphian students participated in the Global Game Jam competition hosted by the Portland Indie Game Squad.
Game jams are events where individuals and groups of creators are challenged to make a video game from scratch in just a short amount of time, usually following some kind of theme announced at the beginning of the event. The Global Game Jam is the world’s largest such event, taking place simultaneously at over 800 locations all over the world with over 40,000 participants. It is a unique opportunity for game developers, both new and experienced, to learn new skills, generate new ideas, and make lasting connections within the community.
For over a decade, the Portland, Oregon site of Global Game Jam has been hosted by Portland Indie Game Squad (PIGSquad), a non-profit organization whose mission is to service independent game developers both in the Pacific Northwest and online. As well as hosting various other game jams throughout the year, they hold regular social events, workshops, livestreams, and more. Celebrating their 13th anniversary this year, PIGSquad’s reach has continued to grow and now supports thousands of independent game developers all over the world. Of the 800+ Global Game Jam sites, PIGSquad’s site is usually in the top 20 worldwide and top 5 domestically in terms of number of participants, and in both 2022 and 2023 they produced the highest number of games out of all the sites in the United States.
Delphian’s lead technology educator, Dylan Bennett, is a member of PIGSquad’s board and has been involved with the PIGSquad community for over a decade. He is known in the game development scene as an educational content creator for people learning to code and make games. He has helped thousands of people learn to make games with his book called Game Development with PICO-8, as well as YouTube tutorials, workshops, livestreams, online classes, and more. In addition to running coding and game development classes at Delphian, he has been facilitating Delphian student participation in Global Game Jam with PIGSquad for the past seven years.
This year, ten students formed four game development teams. The environments and scenarios created in their games included quietly moving books in a realistic library, escaping from a house while being chased by an evil clown, capturing fantastical cats to return them to their cages, and being held captive by a laughing animatronic doll.
Students created games using many programs, including Blender 3D, PICO-8, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Godot. In addition to doing 3D modeling, coding, level design, 2D art, music, and sound, the Global Game Jam challenged students to use teamwork and problem-solving skills to complete their games within the time limit. The following page contains a few successes from a selection of the students who participated.
Aura Valliere
I created a game called Don’t Make Me Laugh, in which the players solve puzzles to escape a haunted house.
This year was my second time participating in the Global Game Jam, and I almost feel like I learned more doing Global Game Jam than I usually do in computer class. This was due to the time limit, which challenged me to learn skills in mere days that usually would take me weeks. This allowed me to solve the constant challenges I faced in creating my game.
For example, I wanted to create a keypad for the player to use. In doing this, I learned that it is much more complicated than you might think. I couldn’t find a tutorial to give me all the answers, so I contacted individuals doing the Global Game Jam to help me figure it out. Finally, once the keypad was working, I had to figure out how to make it so the player didn’t have to double-click on the keypad to get it to work. This took me a while as I ended up going through the code line by line, checking each line, and asking, “Is this working?” I then found the root of the problem and solved it. I learned a lot in the process.
Elliot Adams
This was my second year participating in Global Game Jam, and I wanted to focus on the art of the game to make it really realistic and atmospheric. To do this, I made a realistic library in which the player is challenged to put away books without making too much noise and upsetting the librarian.
One of the biggest challenges I faced was implementing a physics system that players could interact with and that would interact with the surroundings. Since my game was all about sound and not making too much of it, figuring out how each item’s sound would affect the other items was challenging. When I first started, something would make a sound and reverberate through the other items, causing the player to lose immediately within seconds after starting the game. So there were a lot of problems to solve and a lot of coming up with solutions. In coming up with all the solutions, there were new problems to solve. It was really interesting to me to see how each solution impacted the others and the new problems each solution created.
One of the major things I learned from Global Game Jam was the ability to stay committed to a project. In previous projects, I might lose interest and give up after facing a few challenges. The Global Game Jam week didn’t leave time to abandon a project and then start something else, so I had to learn how to face the challenges and push through them, which led to a more polished and complete final product.
Emmett McRae
Before this project, I had never done any 3D modeling. The time limit helped me learn how to create a 3D model without the assistance of tutorials. Tutorial videos are great, but I found it time consuming to keep going back and forth. Learning and understanding the skill more thoroughly so I don’t need to go back and forth not only helped with time, but I also ended up getting a better understanding of what I was doing over all.
Additionally, something significant about working in a team on this project is that I felt a certain pressure and responsibility from having my team count on me. I had to finish my work because my team relied on me. I couldn’t give up because what I was working on wasn’t fun to work on anymore; I had to push through and get it done for my team.
Ethan Hoyt
This was my first year participating in Global Game Jam, and I learned a lot. My team’s game, Cats and Cages, revolved around finding cats throughout the game and putting them away in their cages.
One of the biggest problems I had to solve, which made my brain hurt, was learning to code something in games called “level instancing.” This is where the game tracks data from level to level. For example, if a player picks up a coin on one level, and you want it to remain with them on the next level, you have to code the game to do that.
In my game, I needed to track each level the characters won to unlock the next level. This was difficult because I couldn’t find a tutorial specifically explaining what I was trying to do. I had to watch and learn from several videos and figure out how to combine all the useful snippets. Learning this helped me to understand the blueprints for coding, which will help me code future games.
Also, the time limit helped me start thinking in code. At some point during the Global Game Jam something clicked. I was able to read, understand, and write the code from scratch without constantly needing to find tutorials.
Vlad Bunchuk
This year was my third time participating in Global Game Jam, and I used it as an opportunity to learn an entirely new coding language.
The short time span taught me a lot about time management. The countdown challenged me to direct my attention to building essential elements that make the game work rather than elements I’d like to add just because they’d be cool.
Chenoa Lopez
My role in the Global Game Jam was to help make the music and sound effects for three different games. It was very fun and challenging to create the environments through music.
Through this, I learned a lot about how to work with other people’s tastes. There was a lot of change. For example, sometimes you hear one thing and think it’s great, but they hear something else, so you have to change it until it’s right.
Using different recorded sounds, sounds from instruments, pitch shifters, and other audio tools, I had to figure out how to make all kinds of sounds, from scary ambient music to the sound of a door closing. One of the most challenging sounds to come up with was footsteps. I don’t know why, but it took me a long time to figure it out. I tried several things before finally recording Elliot’s shoes walking on the concrete floor.
Overall, this project taught me the importance of showing your creativity and not holding back; that’s just what you have to do.
