Global Game Jam 2011

Our second Global Game Jam was a mixed experience. The event itself was as fun as the last one, our team was a little bigger than last time. We had three coders, a game designer, and a graphics artist.

Last year we started the production of our game almost immediately but then we had a working idea we really liked from the start. This time there was a little broader limits of the game. It was about extinction. We didn't really want to make a game about creatures killing each other and committing genocide because there isn't really anything interesting or new in the idea. So we spent the first 4-6 hours brainstorming different ideas and in the end we started making two games.

The first game was a board game, it was supposed to use phone as a narrative device. Most of the game would have been interaction between the players in a world that had suffered a major catastrophe. Players are the last members of human species and the conditions they are in are getting worse turn by turn. In the end they all die. The game was called The Last. And due to me getting ill after the first 30 hours or so it was hastily turned into analog game. Cards replaced the phone but the main interaction was still the role-playing between players.

The other game was called Genos Locos. The Phone created a random specie that was unique to that particular game, and when the game ends either player pulls the plug(ends the game) or the creatures die away, the digital specie is gone forever. These creatures grew into a more complex form that consisted of about 10 tiles or cells. And the offsprings inherited genes from their parents. They would randomly mutate a little which would change the color or pattern on them. The goal of the game was to keep them alive as long as possible and in some ways direct the evolution of the specie.

What was disappointment though, we only had five minutes time to show one game, ten minutes total. These games weren't really up to be presented in that time and we barely had the time to explain the basic ideas behind the games. Maybe we bit more than we could chew. Maybe next year...