Welcome to the Game Jam

Between the last of the holiday releases, ridiculous Steam and retail sales, and seemingly endless Game of the Year deliberations, it’s hard to imagine anything else happening in gaming during the month of December. I think it’s a shame, then, that more sites didn’t cover this winter’s Ludum Dare (“To give play”), held on the weekend of 17th to 20th of December.

The Ludum Dare game jam is an informal challenge for both professional independent game developers and those casually interested in game development. Participants are given a theme to adhere to – usually a word or phrase that can be interpreted in a number of ways – and use this to build a game from the ground up in three days; music, art and gameplay included. They say restriction breeds creativity and this is evident in the sheer variety of zany ideas associated with ‘discovery’, the theme of this year. From Metroidvania-esque cave excursions, to identifying new breeds of dinosaurs, to a game where you bust out some disco dance moves (I see what he did there), there’s a lot to see. Some of the ideas may seem silly, some definitely need more time to develop and some just don’t work. But between these experiments, something special usually crops up. It’s no surprise that developers like Markus Persson (Mr. Minecraft) got their start in previous Ludum Dare events.

Ludum Dare’s core competition is the real meat of the weekend, however. Running several times a year since 2002, the competition is effectively the ‘pro’ version of the more relaxed game jam, imposing even more limitations on development, including a 48-hour time limit. In honour of this – and my continuing attempts to get my own game going – a couple of friends and I decided to try running our own little competition, after we missed the deadline for the game jam. In an appropriately geeky manner, we picked out a theme using a random number generator (yeah, I know there’s nothing wrong with a hat!), then set to work. Four hours. ‘Apocalypse’. I could do this!

When it came time to submit, I handed in ‘A Bandit’s Destiny’, a top-down RPG/action hybrid starring a lone gun-man hungry for diamonds and gold in the barren remains of human society. Or at least that was my plan. It became clear early in the competition that four hours was barely enough time to make a functional prototype, let alone something playable, even with rapid development tools like Game Maker.

Despite the bumps along the way, the experience wasn’t a waste of time. The results were, if nothing else, amusing (my friend David’s entry, in which you guide a bee around a maze of fire, was a particular highlight), and I learned to better prioritise tasks while working. And any time I work on a game, I’m reminded of the sheer amount of time and effort that developers must put into even the simplest games; the passion and dedication required for everything from humble indie titles to juggernauts such as Mass Effect 2 is awe-inspiring.

If you want to check out the entries for this Ludum Dare, head here. I’m excited to find out who won the competition when judging ends on 10th of January!