The Game Jam Legacy
Crafting memories, not just games, with every annual sprint.
Hi, I'm David, and this is my space to discuss what I love most: creating video games with my 14-year-old son, Luke. Last year, we released a roguelike called Brawlberry. Now, we’re working on an Irish-themed couch-coop 3D platformer called Druid’s Crown. This is where I share my progress and nerd out about all things games and game development.
I am a big fan of annual traditions. We did not have many that I remember as a kid, but the few we did have, I have kept going into my own children’s lives. What I have ended up doing is creating traditions of my own. The hope is that these touch points become things that will always bring my family back together as it inevitably grows apart as the kids age, and maybe even get passed on to the next generation.
The annual Harry Potter rewatch at Christmas, the Lord of the Rings marathon each summer, co-op games on release, snacks on a long hike, and a swim in the ocean, no matter the weather (but especially on New Year’s Day). I love a good tradition.
Having just returned from the annual father-son hike, I lament the second year we have missed the GMTK game jam. Last year, it was the wife’s birthday, and, though traditions are important, her birthday took priority, of course. This year, we had a gap to go on our hike, and I had to prioritise touching grass over staring at screens for three days straight.
A game jam is basically an all-out sprint to create a full game experience over a set period, with a theme announced at the start to dictate the game to be made.
The GMTK Game Jam is the biggest run by one of the larger game dev YouTubers out there (his videos are an immediate watch for us in this household). You submit your game in the timeframe, and then you play and rate other entrants’ games while others do the same to you. The top 100 is played by Mark, the GMTK owner, and he then picks his top 20 to be put into a video. It is a dream of ours to someday make it into that top 20 spot.
Luke and I have done six in total, and watching the coverage on YouTube of this massive game development event has me waxing lyrical about the game jam as a medium of expression.
We have been working on Druid’s Crowns demo for five months, and when it comes to a game development cycle, we are in the polish and launch phase. It has been a slog to get here.
A game jam takes all phases of development and compresses them into a faster cycle, resulting in, hopefully, a small playable experience. This means that when it comes to learning the different aspects of game development, such as ideation, planning, implementation, polishing, marketing, and launch, a game jam gives you exposure to all aspects in one neat package. It is a perfect and safe way to practise these different aspects without too much commitment, and failure is almost encouraged.
And so, once Luke was old enough and had some basic skills, we entered into this maelstrom of creation with enthusiasm. At the end, we proudly stood over “Berzerker”, our first game jam, and the start of a fine tradition.
I will say the game jam experience is fun, but it is more of that type 2 fun that hiking gives you. Stress is high, the timer is going, and you can easily bite off more than you can chew when it comes to the size of the game you decide to make. Making a game is work, there is no way around it. I have been known to be short with the young man, especially when his work was a little bit more sloppy than it is now, and I was doing more of the heavy lifting. But still, I remember each game and look back on them fondly. They are touch points in our game jam journey, the stepping stones we took before making larger titles.
And so if you're reading this and are new to game development, get out of tutorial hell, join a game jam and take a shot. We failed a few of ours, and they are the ones we joke about and remember the most now.
My father is retiring this year, a big shift in his lifestyle, but I am ready for it. He will be out walking with us and straight into game development alongside us. I hope that when I am his age, Luke will give me that call each year and ask me to do a game jam with him and his kids. Then the effort it took to get the tradition going will be paid back tenfold, and if not, I will have made the most of the time we had.