Thursday marked the beginning of the RIT-Paderborn University Game Jam. Because it was a public holiday (Ascension Day), it started off as a relatively relaxed day with plenty of time to get to the University before the Game Jam started. With that said however, the final handful of minutes before the Jam started turned hectic, as many of the doors around the university were locked. I, as well as a few other students, got utterly and completely lost in a maze of doors, some locked and others unlocked. Despite the obstacles in front of us, we did eventually make it to the Games Lab just in time for the start of the Jam.
When the Game Jam started, we were split into teams of two in order to brainstorm games with the theme “Better Together”. Once that had been done for about 15 minutes, teams were combined into teams of 6 in order to discuss the ideas that people had come up with and decide on a single game to propose. Originally, my partner and I came up with a 2-player maze-puzzle game where the players start in a room together then go down various hallways in order to simultaneously hit levers and complete obstacles in order to advance through the maze. This idea was discussed briefly when we then formed into a team of 6, but we decided to propose a different game that seemed to me like a VR version of Dungeons and Dragons with a single player in VR in the game, and a second player acting as the Dungeon Master from their PC. The PC player would be in charge of spawning in enemies for the VR player and determining what items they get in the game, while the VR player would have to solve puzzles and fight the monsters. I fell in love with this idea, and while it eventually did not make the final cut, as all the teams met and decided on only 6 games despite there being more than 6 teams, I do want to eventually make this game a reality.
After the 6 games to be made had been decided upon, people were then sorted into various development teams for the different games based on their skill-sets. I was chosen to be a coder on a game called A-blob-calypse. Originally I had wanted to be a designer for the game, but because I have a solid coding background and there seemed to be a deficit of coders, I had no issue with filling in the role. Once we were sorted in teams, we began discussing various concepts for the game and how they would be implemented. Unfortunately, I began to feel rather ill midway through the day, and while I did get the chance to contribute to the project to get it started, I ended up heading back to the hotel earlier than I had originally planned so that I could rest up for the next day of development.