Scottish Game Jam

Scottish Game Jam 2011 is GO!

Hey everyone, and welcome to Scottish Game Jam 2011. It’s a little after 1pm here at Glasgow Caledonian University and everyone is starting to turn up. We currently have two webstreams live at http://blogtv.com/people/scottishgamejam and http://blogtv.com/people/manak!

The Winners

And so after much deliberation, the results are in and the winners are:

1. Jarhead

2. 2 Become 1

3. My Blob and Me

A fantastic effort and job well done all around guys *clap clap clap*

Now it’s off to a major cleanup session ensuring that everything is returned as is because come 9am monday morning students will swarm all over the campus to welcome in the new semester.

A post event round up will follow soon……

and the other great games….

The Games

After 48 hours of intense development, our 6 teams presented their games to the judges to find out how they did. On the judging panel we had

• Ross Mills - Realtime Worlds
• Kestutis Tauckela - Realtime Worlds
• Jesse Knapp - Realtime Worlds
• David Thomson - Denki
• Peter Shea - Firebrand Games

These were the games under review:

1. The Hueys - A puzzle platformer developed on XNA. The game consists of four coloured blocks aka the hueys, each of which has a unique ability - attacking, climbing, jumping, swimming. The idea is to use their abilities, by spraying them different colours, to tackle obstacles in order to achieve the objective. 
2. My Blob and Me - Another XNA developed game. It’s a 2D platformer where you control a central character who has absolutely no abilities by itself i.e. no running, jumping etc But when the character meets an alien parasite he gets his abilities and can do the afore mentioned. The downside, yes there’s always one, is that if the parasite attaches himself for too long you will die. Nice bit of optimism for a sunday afternoon.
3. Planet Om Nom - Somewhat reminiscent of Flow, this was a puzzle game developed in XNA. The game concept puts you in charge of a solar flare and you can increase its mass by rolling over astroids or reeling them in with your gravitational pull.
4. 2 Become 1 - Luckily not based on the Spice Girls Song. This was a 2D Flash Platformer loosely based on Ico. The game has a very unique style and they definitely win my vote for most stylish. At the core of the game are two young lovers who cannot bear to be apart, this is symobolised by the holding hands. In order to progress, the young lovers need to climb platforms and pull switches but can only do this once they let go of each other. If they are separated for too long then the world around them succumbs to darkness and then it’s GAME OVER.
5. Johnny Fetus - Another XNA game which involves two test tube alien fetuses (yes I’m not making this up) being fed via a tube. No mention of what the food is. Both babies (alien babies, alien babies) are fed via the same tube so the idea is to maintain the balance by following a ‘sweet spot’ on a left/right balance using the left control stick on the 360 pad.
6. Jarhead - Another puzzler where spheres are dropped into a beaker of water and to achieve a high score the spheres must be fed with ‘growth’ and ‘shrink’ seeds. If the spheres are submerged for too long they effect the depth of the water so if the water runs out or spills over then you lose.

Now it’s over to some screenshots……