[Archives] My Top 6 Favorite Game Jams

Archives, Game Development

Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam® (GGJ) is the world’s largest game jam event (game creation) taking place around the world at physical locations. Think of it as a hackathon focused on game development. It is the growth of an idea that in today’s heavily connected world, we could come together, be creative, share experiences and express ourselves in a multitude of ways using video games – it is very universal. The weekend stirs a global creative buzz in games, while at the same time exploring the process of development, be it programming, iterative design, narrative exploration or artistic expression. It is all condensed into a 48 hour development cycle. The GGJ encourages people with all kinds of backgrounds to participate and contribute to this global spread of game development and creativity. 

Ludum Dare

Ludum Dare is an online community best known for“Ludum Dare”, the Accelerated Game Development Event of the same name (also called a “Game Jam”). During a Ludum Dare, developers from around the world spend a weekend creating games based on a theme suggested by the community. Ludum Dareevents take place every April, August and December. 

ProcJam

#procjam is a game jam about making stuff that makes other stuff.  

Our aims for PROCJAM are:

– To make procedural generation accessible to more people.
– To host a jam that is laid back, easy to enter, and fun to be a part of.
– To build a community of friends and peers across disciplines.
– To show off projects that are pushing the boundaries of generative software.

Cyberpunk Jam

As game developers, we have responsibilities to influence the future. I believe we should use it for positive ones, not negative. Create a game within the time allowed to leave a positive influence on the impending future using the theme and motives of the cyberpunk genre. While that is more solarpunk than cyberpunk, it still fits within the parent genre. Seeing as this is cyberpunk, literally almost anything goes content wise. 

Glitchjam

Glitch Jam was an official Game Jolt jam. The challenge was to make a game that deliberately used glitches as an integral part of gameplay or that otherwise embraced a glitched-out aesthetic. 

TarotJam

For the purposes of this jam, participating developers/artists are welcome to use the Tarot as a general theme, a structural guideline, a creative jumping off point, or simply a source of inspiration. Perhaps you want to create an alternative synchronistic divinatory system, like the Tarot or the I Ching. Perhaps you’d like to invent a brand new game using the Tarot (or the more “standard” deck of playing cards derived therefrom) as a primary component. Perhaps you’d like to pick a single card, any card, and make a game based on its specific themes and symbols. Perhaps you’d like to do something completely different. Do what makes sense to you and what excites you most! 

[Archives] Gamedev Tools – “Paint of Persia” First Impressions

Archives, Art, Game Development, Review

Paint of Persia is an interesting pixel art rotoscoping pixel art tool I came across recently, and it looked interesting.  Animating is one of my least favorite tasks, and while I don’t particularly like rotoscoped styles, I can appreciate it.  
There are a wide variety of uses for a tool like this, ranging from simply wanting a game with a rotoscoped style, to wanting to draw over reference easier.

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Keep reading for my thoughts on Paint of Persia!

[Archives] How to Manage your Game’s Scope

Archives, Game Development

Creating a game involves combining a variety of different components – from programming to art to sound – and it can be difficult to manage all of it at once. Especially in a game jam setting, where you need to create a game from scratch in a short amount of time, it’s easy to get caught up implementing features you want, while accidentally ignoring other things that really need to be done first.  So how do you manage all of that?

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Current – a platformer made for Global Game Jam while at SCAD

Read how I manage scope when designing my games below.

[Archives] AutoTileGen Review – Automatic Tilemap Generation for Games

Archives, Art, Game Development, Review

I’m a pixel artist and a game developer, but I hate making tilemaps.  To me, it’s just tedium – making the same image over and over with little tweaks for corners and edges.  And SO many combinations of corners and edges.
So when I heard there was a tool that would automatically create an entire tilemap from as little as just three images, I knew I had to try it.

AutoTileGen lets you create a game-ready tilemap from just three images.

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All you need is a single tileable texture, a “cap and bottom” image, and a “sides” image.  If you want a background included in your tilemap, that’s a very simple forth image.  AutoTileGen then does all the tedious work for you!

[Archives] 5 Indie Game Expos you should Check Out

Archives, Game Development

E3 is well under way, and as excited as I am for some of the titles shown, a lot of things looked very same-y this year from the main press events.  Gaming is so vast, and even last year’s E3 seemed to have a wider variety of game genres shown.
Here’s a list of a few smaller festivals and expos, where you can find the types of games not normally shown in a large industry event.