Today was finally the day: the start of our game jam!!!! However, it didn’t start off very well as Alex, Mike, and I got on the bus and had to get off a few stops later. Apparently, the holiday meant that it wasn’t going the entire route, so we ended up across the street from the train station – a 30 minute walk to campus. We got a taxi at the station and it dropped us off at the other side of campus, which wouldn’t have been a big deal except that we were walled in by buildings and almost all the doors were locked. To add to that, we thought we could just cross the building and end up in the quad, but one of the two doors we needed to go through was locked. I don’t know why, but there were no other open doors in any of the buildings, so what would be an easy walk ended up a stressful wander through three buildings trying to find an exit until we had to double back.
That aside, we arrived at the game lab only a few minutes late and we quickly got started. The theme of “working better together” was announced and we split up into teams of two and then six to decide on game ideas and narrow down the most interesting ones. We ended up going with my idea – a short film idea I had created for a final project a few semesters ago called “Return to Otter Space.” As it implies, an astronaut crashes onto a water planet and befriends an otter to help him rebuild his ship and return to outer (otter) space. I was nervous when we started voting to narrow down game ideas after they were presented, but my game idea managed to make the cut by last place; a few of my teammates seemed glad that it passed through too.
My team is fantastic. The bomb dot com. I’ve never worked on a team of this size, nor have I been able to work just solely on art. Although I consider myself creative I’m not primarily a game designer, so having other students to come up with the ideas and figure out the finer mechanics and ideas was such a relief. And they’re great at it too. We also have four sound designers, which is something completely new to me. Our IGME program doesn’t teach sound, so it’s usually an afterthought and done by whoever has the time to spare. After taking basic sound recording with SOFA, I realized that sound was a really important and overlooked aspect of games. I think with these students dedicating all of the jam to sound effects and music will give our game more of a professional feel that I wouldn’t have gotten at RIT.
Our programmers are fantastic as well. I was excited when Tobias, a student we have been spending time with earlier in the week, joined us as a programmer. I thought getting the otter to follow the player around would be a nearly impossible task to figure out, but he managed to get a really cute and interesting swimming pattern nearly finished in only a few hours. I was feeling tired after modeling a power cell and power dock, but seeing that has reinvigorated me and I’m really excited to get back to work. Everyone is going back to the hotel early, so I will probably join them, but if no one stopped me I think I could work through the entire night because I’m having such a good time. I am so thankful I had the resources and support to go on this trip, and I look forward to the rest of the game jam this weekend.