Game Jam 2022

 

1. Introduction

“A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game from scratch. Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The event duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields. Some game jams are contests, others are not.”- Defined by Wikipedia.

 

This Game Jam for TUDublin Game Jam 2022 was made with the main theme being that of all games must cover a specific topic or general language learning, allowing the player to learn, test or play a game with any language (apart from English) and learn from it. The format for this Game Jam had us in teams of 4 or 5, most being teams of 4. This was my first ever Game Jam and I found it quite enjoyable.

 

2. Team

 

There were 4 people in my team including me: Me, Eimear, Amy and Racheal. Eimear is another CDM student and friend of mine, Amy and Racheal were business students who also studied Spanish, as such we decided to make a game based on the Spanish Language. Our team name was Team Hyena.

 

The roles for the team were separated out like this- Me and Eimear were the primary game developers while Amy and Racheal wrote the story and translated all of the Spanish found in the game. We collectively decided on a story were the player wakes up in a train and finds themselves Lost in Spain, hence the name. The end goal was to traverse Spain for one day until your next train to Paris arrived. We used a new game development software none of us had ever used before and I had never even heard of, called Twine.

 

 

3. Organisation and planning – how did you approach the project as a team?  This is a good place to include links to your brainstorms, treatment, Game Design Document etc.

 

In the planning phase we decided our team roles and came up with the barebones for the story very quickly. We almost instantly decided we would do a game where you get stuck in Spain, Eimear suggested using Twine having heard of it before in Game Jams she participated in before all be it not having much experience in. We decided the plan should be me and Eimear to handle the coding and heavy game elements in the project, and Amy and Racheal could tackle into the story and its Spanish elements. While we decided on a lot of things quite quickly we also had this Miro board to post things we found, this included possible colour schemes to backgrounds, timetables throughout the weekend, and also we made a discord channel in an established Game Jam server to talk and keep track of links and such: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVOJqtjsA=/?invite_link_id=352706568624

 

4. Process/ Production

 

In Twine Eimear and I watched a playlist of basic introduction videos on YouTube and learned how to use the software while the story was being written. Eimear wrote most of the passages and copied the story over from Amy and Racheal, once all the passages were written up she connected them all and published the script and link on a google doc so we could all see and edit if necessary (Spelling mistakes and such). Then I stepped in and looked through all the code and applied all English and Spanish fixes and corrections (This took quite a considerable amount of time.) After this the game needed some moving of passages, story lines we had cut and decided to retire needed to be mended, of which I did. After that the game functionally worked 100%, but it was simple text with no effects or colours on text, and a solid back background with no life or sound effects.

 

I watched a number of more advanced tutorials and learned how to apply effects to text like size, colour, font-family, etc. I also learned how to add backgrounds and add music as well as make the text easier to see against the background by adding a background to the text. This all was very difficult but it worked in the same way as a HTML file with a CSS file dictating the final look. While it was still a lot more complex and different to HTML pages I made before, after a lot of hard study and testing it eventually became the game it is now. The hardest thing to add by far was the music. As well as adding the ability to have backgrounds, I also made a lot of the first backgrounds, which dictated the way the game style looked there on in. I designed the following backgrounds, while the rest were done by Eimear:

 

Also here is some snippits of code from the CSS, there was hours of trial and error to create the game as it never seemed to work first try! I also consulted with the team when I got stuck, there communication is exactly what got me through this Game Jam:

 

 

5. Lessons learned

 

My main takeaways from this Game Jam are I now know how to work on games in a completely new software- Twine! I also now have experience with working as a team on a game, being a team player and helping others, the improvements of my time management skills were definitely reflected in the work I put in while also juggling numerous previously planned activities that weekend, and I also learned how to use new CSS code like tw-link, tw-story, tw-passage and more!

I thoroughly enjoyed participating in the Game Jam and would love to do another one in the future, maybe one were there are no restrictions to languages this time, and more creativity allowed! The most rewarding and challenging aspect of this game jam was using Twine, It was hard, it didn’t work all the time and constantly caused new problems, but it was an experience and knowledge I gained and will not be forgetting anytime soon.

 

Link to our game: https://bombcircles.itch.io/lost-in-spain