Ten teams consisting of about 60 participants total competed in this year's Game Jam. Our team, named Capitol Crunch, consisted of three guys from the IGDA DC chapter, and myself representing the IGDA Philly chapter. Having learned of the event only two weeks ago, I was very lucky to have found a team willing to take me on. My teammates Sam, Nate, and Zaal, each had backgrounds in engineering. I fulfilled the team's need for an artist.
Left to right: Nikko, Sam, Zaal, and Nate
The topic was announced at 6:00 PM on Friday. In light of it being Mother's Day weekend, the topic assigned was "Mothers." The Phoenix chapter of IGDA was also hosting a Game Jam that weekend. They received the same topic at 9:00 PM EDT.
Our group spent the first three hours of the competition rigorously brainstorming game concepts. We emerged with four solid ideas, and settled on one we felt could be best implemented over the time allotted. I can't speak more highly of the group's ability to present creative ideas and collaboratively critique and build upon them. I was impressed and inspired by the group's dynamic, and was exited and proud to be a part of it. The experience was invigorating.
The concept we settled on was an NES-style platformer centered around a mother, Mama Duck, who was tasked with the responsibility of guiding three little ducklings to safety through each level of the game. However, each level would be designed in a fashion that required Mama Duck to rely on the unique traits of each duckling in order to overcome obstacles riddled along the way.
Left to right: Chubbers, Stretch, and Eggar
Chubbers: Short and round, this duckling is the slowest of the three. His weight and short wingspan prevent him from fluttering very far. However, his soft and surprisingly elastic constitution gives him the ability to bounce to great heights. This ability can combine with other ducklings as he serves as a springboard to them as they bounce and project off of him.
Stretch: Tall and thin, this duckling is the fastest of the three. His light weight reduces stopping ability, and his short wings prevent him from fluttering very far. However, his narrow frame and ability to reach high speed allows this duckling to sail through the air with little resistance over great distance.
Eggar: With an average height and weight, this duckling takes after his mother in most every way. His single outstanding characteristic is a full set of wings that allows him the ability to flutter over great distance.
The platform used to implement this concept was Flixel, an open source ActionScript library for use in Flash game development. As my teammates began to flush out the code for the platformer, I began sketching out the concept art and working on art assets. All Mama Duck animation sprites were completed by early afternoon on Saturday. All of Chubbers animation sprites were done by that evening. Tiles were then created for map making in Mappy, a free tile map editor. Sprite animations for Stretch and Eggar were done by early morning Sunday. The final order for assets were the background paintings and splash screens.
I have to hand it to these guys. My teammates really pulled it together in the last few hours. Over the course of the 48 hours they managed to overcome several hurdles in the programming process. But in the last few hours, the game was so plagued with bugs it appeared as though we may not have had a working release by the submission time. They buckled down, took what they knew worked and got something up and running. Then the magic came in the polishing stage. It really pulled together in the end, and I'm really proud of my team's accomplishment. Given 48 hours, we started from scratch and emerged with a working title. Congratulations guys!
Coverage of the event can also be found at The Game Design Forum in an article titled Scenes From a Game Jam by Patrick Holleman.
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