A little late in running but the Scottish leg of the Global Game Jam, being held in the Saltire Centre of Glasgow Caledonian University, is almost underway! Contraints and theme have been revealed to the 43 jammers and they’re almost done setting up their development beasts in the open-plan area of Caledonian’s library.

The Theme for the SGJ is Deception, meaning games must revolve around trickery and fooling around with an opponent (or maybe even the player!), and on top of all that the game must contain either a Rink, a Sink, or a Wink. A tricky task? Not necessarily so for the best, foolhardiest developers, designers and artists that Glasgow and beyond can cough up.

The 43 jammers were introduced to the SGJ with a presentation from Dare To Be Digital from The University of Abertay Dundee and an additional talk on game jams by Realtime World’s Kestutis Tauckela, who is taking a break from developing up-and-coming MMO All Points Bulletin to oversee the entire Game Jam from Friday to Sunday. On top of all this, university lecturer Jon Sykes will be subjecting each jammer to a quick questionnaire each hour to see how they’re coping on an emotional level, all in the name of SCIENCE.

We’ll keep you posted through various channels, but most notably through our Twitter feed @scottishgamejam. Keep an eye on it, spread the word, and watch for our uStream coming online on the GGJ homepage!

Glasgow out!

1st February 2009

And so after much deliberation, the results are in and the winners are:

1. Jarhead

2. 2 Become 1

3. My Blob and Me

A fantastic effort and job well done all around guys *clap clap clap*

Now it’s off to a major cleanup session ensuring that everything is returned as is because come 9am monday morning students will swarm all over the campus to welcome in the new semester.

After 48 hours of intense development, our 6 teams presented their games to the judges to find out how they did. On the judging panel we had

• Ross Mills – Realtime Worlds
• Kestutis Tauckela – Realtime Worlds
• Jesse Knapp – Realtime Worlds
• David Thomson – Denki
• Peter Shea – Firebrand Games

A puzzle platformer developed on XNA. The game consists of four coloured blocks aka the hueys, each of which has a unique ability – attacking, climbing, jumping, swimming. The idea is to use their abilities, by spraying them different colours, to tackle obstacles in order to achieve the objective.

An XNA developed game, ‘My Blob and Me’ is a 2D platformer where you control a central character who has absolutely no abilities by itself i.e. no running, jumping etc But when the character meets an alien parasite he gets his abilities and can do the afore mentioned. The downside, yes there’s always one, is that if the parasite attaches himself for too long you will die. Nice bit of optimism for a sunday afternoon.

Somewhat reminiscent of Flow, this was a puzzle game developed in XNA. The game concept puts you in charge of a solar flare and you can increase its mass by rolling over asteroids or reeling them in with your gravitational pull.

Luckily not based on the Spice Girls Song. This was a 2D Flash Platformer loosely based on Ico. The game has a very unique style and they definitely win my vote for most stylish. At the core of the game are two young lovers who cannot bear to be apart, this is symobolised by the holding hands. In order to progress, the young lovers need to climb platforms and pull switches but can only do this once they let go of each other. If they are separated for too long then the world around them succumbs to darkness and then it’s GAME OVER.

An XNA game which involves two test tube alien fetuses (yes I’m not making this up) being fed via a tube. No mention of what the food is. Both babies (alien babies, alien babies) are fed via the same tube so the idea is to maintain the balance by following a ‘sweet spot’ on a left/right balance using the left control stick on the 360 pad.

A puzzler where spheres are dropped into a beaker of water and to achieve a high score the spheres must be fed with ‘growth’ and ‘shrink’ seeds. If the spheres are submerged for too long they effect the depth of the water so if the water runs out or spills over then you lose.

OK, so they were not really violent, or swarming – but there were a couple of unhappy teams, and they had a bone to pick.

You see, it is all down to the contracts. Global Game Jam (not the Scottish Game Jam) changed contracts at the last minute after team rebellion in another country…. the Scottish contestants, with their legally critical minds and sleepless nights, believed that they were handing over all their commercial rights – but retaining all the liabilities…

Romana, still charming after 45 hours without sleep, calmed the situation with a alternative contract and a baseball bat. Now there is peace across the jammin world.