Suffolk saw its first ever game jam event as forty games students from around the region came to UCS Ipswich to take part in the Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game-making event, which took place over the weekend in the School of Arts & Humanities at UCS Ipswich.
Nine computer games were created over the weekend. The game jam started at 5.00 pm Friday 27th January and closed at 4.00 pm on Sunday 29th. The student designers worked, ate, and sometimes even slept at their computers over the course of the event.
As the event launched, participants were shown some inspiring video clips from well-known game designers, specifically made to launch the world-wide event. They were then shown an image of ouroboros, the ancient symbol of a snake swallowing its own tail, which was presented to participants to interpret however they wished for this year’s theme.
Several video cameras were rigged up to stream the event live on the internet and, over the course of the weekend, over 1,250 viewers logged on to the UCSgames channel on Justin.TV to watch and listen to the event, Big Brother style.
A panel of judges awarded certificates for Best Graphics, Best Audio and Best Game. Judges included Mo Touman, independent games designer, Rob Head, Managing Director of Sliding Pixel, and internationally renowned chip-tune musician and independent developer, Matthew Applegate (aka Pixel8).
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The Best Graphics award went to Knossos, a maze-game created in XNA by a team made up of UCS graduate games designers and programmers.
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The certificate for Best Audio was given to a team of second year computer game students for sound in their 3D first-person game, called KEVIN, developed in Unity.
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The Best Game award was won by a group of first year game design students for Snake A-Maze, their interpretation of the classic Snake game, created in Flash.
All the games created for the UCS Game Jam can be seen on the UCS page of the Global Game Jam website: http://globalgamejam.org/og/games/17174/list|
Other games created by UCS Games Design students can be played online at http://www.waterfrontgames.com/|
The Global Game Jam (GGJ) is the world's largest game jam event occurring annually in late January. GGJ brings together thousands of game enthusiasts participating through many local jams around the world. GGJ is a project of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). http://globalgamejam.org/|