Seattle Indies Global Game Jam 2019 Developer’s Log Novella

Mar 29th, 2019 by Anthony Ritchey
Tagged:

Written by Anthony Ritchey
Co-Contributor, and Additional Coverage, by Emily Rose
Edited, with Substantial Interview Compilations, by Josh Curry
Poster Art by Austin Whitaker
And contributions and technical advisement from the Seattle Indies community and Global Game Jammers

A frequent request from game jammers during the Seattle Indies Game Jam was a thorough glimpse into the development cycles of other teams.

A game jammer, knee deep in his, her, or their work, might be working next to their neighbors, but never know how they went about building their games. Consider this 12,129-word essay a long-overdue, near novella length companion piece to the shorter 1,708-word Global Game Jam 2019 Summary published and documented in video form shortly after Global Game Jam. The reporters on this assignment – Anthony Ritchey and Emily Rose – interviewed a number of game developers as they worked on their games. We interviewed as many people as we could, but we weren’t able to reach out to everyone.

If you’d like to be featured in our next essay, just reach out to any Seattle Indies volunteer during our next game jam: May 10th through 12th at Pacific Science Center!

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List of Participants

AIE
Lizz Rizzo – Coordinator

Pacific Science Center
Daniel Rother – Coordinator

Seattle Indies
Tim Cullings – Coordinator

Seattle Indies Mentors
Ben Burbank – Unity
Nat Brown – Unity/VR
Heather Coles – UX/UI
Adrian Finol – Source Engine
fluffy – Audio
Christian Keith Fowler – Unity/Animation/QA
Thomas Key – Unity/VR
Owen Macindoe – Unreal
Jane Ng – Unity
Dan Rosas Paulsen – Unity
Shania Smith – Art / Game Jam Volunteer
Kevin Tarchenski – Unity
Trevor White – Art

Seattle Indies Volunteers
Bilgem Cakir – Videography
Josh Curry – Essay Editor
Marcel Dao – Volunteer
Chris Dougherty – Photography
Jenn – Volunteer
Andrew McDonald – Volunteer
Anthony Ritchey – Journalist
Emily Rose – Journalist

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The Games and The Teams

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A Place of My Own (Twine)
Team: Seth Paxton (Solo Developer)

BEE BUDZ (Pico-8)
Team: Matthew McCord (Pixel Art, Sound, Music, Design, and Programming) and David Sharer (Programming and Design)

Beyond Home (Unity)
Team: Terry Nguyen (Camera Control and Player Motor), Rob Rood (Enemy AI and Modeling Assistance), Max Sandler (Audio), Ray Soyama (Controls), and Terence Tolman (Project Lead, Design, 3D Modeling, Rigging, and Animation)

Billed to Order (Unity)
Team: Patrick Allred (Audio Programming, Sound Design, and Music), Victor Cortez (FX and Art), Tomas Gomez (3D Art), John Michael Hunt (Sound Design), Ed Lu (Programming), Avery Pratt (Music and Programming), and Steve Zapata (3D and Tech Art)

Bombuszled (Unreal)
Team: Joshua Graham (Solo Developer)

Community Vibes (VR, Oculus Go)
Team: Beverly Aarons (Solo Developer)

Deco Dash (Unity)
Team: “Sticky Biscuits” – David Evans (Gameplay Code Programming, Implementation, Technical Art, Shaders), Nina Kim (3D Modeling, Primary Environment Design), Marshall Parsons (Character Art, Character Modeling, Animations), and Jeff Sparks (Game and Level Design)

Dino Baby (Unity)
Team: Alexi Most (Programming), Jonathan Day (Programming), Forrest McCarthy (Programmer), and Kylie Bishop (Artist)

else { return home; } (Unity)
Team: Robert Ackley (Gameplay Programming, AI and Direction), Nick Amlag (3D Character, Prop Art, and Level Design), Steven J Garcia (Composition, Sound Design and Narrative Design), Andrew Hermus (Gameplay Programming and Audio Engineering), Andrew Hung (Graphics Engineering and UI/UX Programming), Andrew McPherson (Gameplay Programming and Production), and Josh Soldate (3D Environment Art and Level Design)

Ember (Unity)
Team: “Goma Games” – Jon Borgonia (Game Development), Kelli Borgonia (Art), and Te Vallee (Game Development, SFX, and BGM)

Famine Fury TD (Unity)
Team: Kyle Beck (Code), Kyle Lehman (Design), Jeremiah Lindsey (Art), Jacob Lyons (Code), and Josiah Lyons (Music and Sound Effects)

Fashion Conductor (Unity)
Team: Cade Anderson (Game Art, Timer Logic, UI, and Programming), Charlie Anderson (Player Control Programming), Nathan Collins (Additional game Art), Matthew Fiebelkorn (SFX), Carter Patterson (NPC, Gameplay Logic, and Programming), and Macaulay Szymanski (Music)

Fido (Unreal)
Team: Daniel Beebe (Art and Levels), Eugene Paik (Programming), Kyle Tenan (Programmer and Animator), Erika Rimmer (UI/UX and Writing), and Evan Witt (Music)

Fight The Dungeon (Unity)
Team: Kobey Myhre (Solo Developer)

Finding Home
Team: “Double Comfort” – Developers: Andy Lohmann, Jaime Mendez, Eduardo Rojas, and Miles Rufat-Latre. Artists: Karen Latre, Seth Paxton, and Tanisha Vernekar. Level Design: Aaron “ronnie” Jones. Project Manager: Budi Mulyo. Sound Design, Composition: Jacob Eliett and Mark Hinojoso

Home Is Where Everyone Loves You (MS Windows, Virtual Reality platform)
Team: Eric Carter (Game Design) and John Michael Hunt (Audio/Music)

Home: A Ranger’s Story (Unreal)
Team: Shawn “Xombi” Hubbart (Solo Developer)

Homing missiles coming home (Unity)
Team: “Clueless” – Pouria Ghadimi (UI), Erfan Dastournejad (Art), and Kasra Rahimi (Game Design and Gameplay Logic). Good Idea Production (Music)

House Haunters (Unity)
Team: Camden Cecrle, Daniel Dovali, Alvaro Herrasti, Sam Kern, Fernando Reyes Medina, William Pheloung, Beverly Van Daal

Housing reroll (.Net, Unity)
Team: Shawn Featherly (Solo Developer)

Internet of Things 3D Simulator 2019! (Unity)
Team: Evan Witt and “Sim9”

Melancholy Moyo (Unreal)
Team: Danilo Aimini, Kevin Chen, Tye Hastings, Joshua Lee, Misty Loreen, Riley O’Callaghan, Rabecca Rocha, Sheridan Thirsk

Melody Forest (GameMaker on MacOS El Capitan)
Team: Anna Shomsky (Design, Art), Iduna Shomsky (Art, Sound), Mike Shomsky (Art, Design)

My Home Is Mobile (Unity)
Team: Paul Gibbons, Shea Michael McAuley, Macaulay Szymanski, with contributions by Levi.

Nesting Season (Unity)
Team: “Penguin” – Julie Godwin (Art, Design, ‘Mama’ Voice), Olin Olmstead (Programming, Design), Max Sandler (SFX), and Cameron Shimmin (Music). Featuring: Guy Dow-Sainter (Narration)

Osmosis Bones (Unity)
Team: Dan Gonyea (Programming), Jeff Goodhue (Programming), Drew Scott (Writing), Cameron Stevenson (3D), and Macaulay Szymanski (Voice Acting, Sound Effects)

Out of the Ashes (Unreal)
Team: Rich Bailly, JT Johnson, Craig Reuss, and Peter Reuss

PARTYENGINE (Unity)
Team: Nick Kaman (Art), Felix Peaslee (Music), and Caelan Pollock (Code)

Pigeon Hole (Unity)
Team: Jason Cheng (Animation, Programming), Joseph Chiang (UI, Programming), Anastasia Krivtsova (Art), David Yamato (Art), and Po-Chen Yang (Programming)

Potluck Storytime (Non-Digital Game: Oven, Grill, Stovetop, and Kettle)
Team: Jenn Sandercock and Jason Swan

Rain City (Unity)
Team: Jupiter Gertley (Environment Artist), Michael Kaplor (Programming, Lighting), Zach Oriel (Gameplay Programmer), Betty Paschke (Character Artist, Animator), and Macaulay Szymanski (Audio)

StreamWarning (Twitch)
Team: Louis Vichy (Solo Developer)

subirbia (Unity)
Team: Mary Bush (Game Programming, UI, Art), Matthew Fiebelkorn (Sound Effects, Music), and Tom Hunt (Game Design, Core Game Programming, Animation, Art, Production)

Toweritis (Unreal)
Team: Henry Banks (Programming), William Halbert (Art), Ben Vongtawan (Programming), and Sabrina Waller (Art)

We’re Off to Slay the Wizard (Unity)
Team: Travis Benton (Character, Menu Art), Xan Farley (Concept, Design), Wendy Kang (UI/UX), Jessica Nagamatsu (Environment, Prop Art), Plushie Hornet (moral support), Xander Thomas (Programming), and Evan Witt (Music)

Welcome to the Bone Zone (Unreal)
Team: Noah Albright, Isaiah Mann, Michael Pacheco, Martin Wong

Welcome to the Island (Godot)
Team: Justin Camelia (Programming), Shanen Cross (Programming), Taylor Dickson (3D Models, Artist), Elliot Hansen (3D Models, Artist), Chris Johnson (3D Models, Artist), Brad Kraeling – (Programming, Audio), Darsh Lin (Writing, Programming), and Paul Von Zimmerman (Programming, Game Design)

What a Drag (Unity)
Team: Jennifer Cook (House Art), Bry Hunter (Project Lead, Conceptual Design), Andrew McDonald (Programming), Benjamin Shutt (Programming), Corwin Waldron (3D Environment Art), and Handa Yoh (Main Character Art)

youre the man now dog (Unity)
Team: Zomawia Sailo (Solo Developer)

Additional game jammers were present that either attempted to make games but did not submit them or used the game jam atmosphere to work on their own games. One such example was Scott Bjerk, who was interviewed and offered context on being a solo game developer at a game jam but chose not to submit a game.

[Note: The information was taken from the Global Game Jam website. If there are any typos or mistakes, please reach out to contact@seattleindies.org.]

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Friday
5PM

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Pacific Science Center opened its doors for game jammers to arrive early to prepare their equipment. Jammers were allowed to enter through the blue door of the loading dock of the side entrance, off 2nd Ave North, to register and unload equipment.

While most jammers brought laptops (and sleeping bags or suitcases depending on whether they were staying overnight), some brought second monitors, full-sized desktop computers, large tablets for drawing, musical instruments, and VR headset stations. This early load-in time enabled jammers that coordinated either via the official Discord server or otherwise knew what groups they wanted to be in to meet and coordinate tasks prior to learning the theme of the jam.

The event took place in two locations at Pacific Science Center. The primary location was the main hall of the Ackerley Family Exhibit Gallery, which was the location of November’s Seattle Indies Game Jam, and hosted around 100 of the jammers. A quieter space with lower lighting was also available in Pacific Science Center’s Building 4. About half of the jammers were new to Pacific Science Center or the Seattle Indies. Some of these jammers had been to other locations in the past ranging from Milwaukee, Tennessee, Texas, and Iran, and throughout the weekend, jammers stated that they appreciated the amenities, caffeine, and arrangements allocated to jammers.

Some of the first to arrive were returning jammers from the Seattle Indies Game Jam, including a majority of the core team behind Good Night, Rowan, recipient of the Honorable Mention for Best Sound Design. Sound designer Steven Garcia outlined their team effort: “Sarah couldn’t make it this time, unfortunately, but we have Robert, Andrew [Hermus], and Andrew [Hung]. We’re planning to make a more ambitious project this time around. We prepared beforehand by designating clear roles, so there won’t be much overlap.” Since they all worked well together and enjoyed the process, they started plans a week and a half before the game jam on a Discord server to plan out the logistics and roles. As Graphics and UI/UX Programmer Andrew Hung added: “We basically did some high-level brainstorming of ideas, aesthetics, and techniques that might be fun to try at this jam.” Their team created the ambitious else { return home; }, which was the winner of Honorable Mention for Best Use of Color.

Kasra Rahimi, one-third of the team that created Baffled Brawl at Seattle Indies Game Jam, which won Honorable Mention for Design, echoed this sentiment as he looked for a good spot where they could put up post-it notes as part of their Scrum board. He met his teammates Erfan Dastournejad and Pouria Ghadimi, who work together on AR/VR games including Artifice which they showed off at the most recent Seattle Indies Show and Tell, for the first time in November. Kasra explained that they started working together well instantly. Similarly to their strategy last time, Kasra would handle a majority of the coding, delegate large tasks like UI to Pouria, while Efran would create characters and draw. Their team created Homing missiles coming home.

Olin Olmstead, one-third of the team that created Goblungee at Seattle Indies Game Jam, which won Honorable Mention for Art, had similar plans. Olin was looking for Julie Godwin, the artist he first collaborated with on Goblungee, and Cameron Shimmin, the musician he also first collaborated with on Goblungee. They had worked well together last time, so they coordinated working together at Global Game Jam. Their team, joined by Sound Effects Designer Max Sandler and a guest narrator, created Nesting Season, which won the community favorite vote.

Budi Mulyo, one-third of the team that created experimental VR-game Elemental Forest, had just dropped off two cases of Yerba Mate tea to provide a healthy option for jammers, and was looking for as many people as possible to create something even more ambitious. His 11-person team, under his guidance and experience running non-profit AR/VR company SIXR, made Finding Home.

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Friday
7PM

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Game jammers met at the main hall of the Ackerley Family Exhibit Gallery for debriefing.

Code of conduct
Tim briefly covered the Seattle Indies Code of Conduct.

Logistics
Tim and Daniel explained the Pacific Science Center space. Security was on-site throughout the weekend, so jammers could leave their equipment overnight if they were to bus or drive home to sleep.

Sponsors
Including from AIE, IDGA, Turboplay, and Gfuel.

Videos
Global Game Jam featured assorted videos from game jammers all over the world talking what game jams mean to them and their work processes.

Theme
The theme was revealed worldwide at 9PM Pacific Time: “What Home Means To You.”

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Friday
9PM

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After the theme of “What Home Means To You” was revealed, game jammers returned to their stations if they had pre-formed or to the main hall for brainstorming and group forming. Jammers pitched ideas, stated their specialties, and listed off what they needed. This space also enabled those to join groups with interesting premises. These were the pitches presented:

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Friday
10PM

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From here, we’ll shift gears into our interview section.

The format presented below will feature the name of the game, the first names of the team, along with any additional reference material that will be helpful for keeping track of people’s names and roles. The questions asked by two interviewers in italicized text, Anthony and Emily, whose names are condensed to “A” and “E” to focus on the responses. If either interviewer had more of a comment than a formal interview-style question, then their first name will appear. The responses are then formatted into one of two formats: either a sentence or paragraph summarizing points, or when possible a direct quote.

As an important note about the quotes presented below. These interviews represent the best efforts of two volunteer journalists trying to capture, in written form, a dynamic conversation in real time without recording gear like video or audio recording. They, instead, opted for written recording, via pen/paper or smartphone. The conversations may have unfortunately undergone edits and changes during the recreation process to capture the nature or authenticity of the conversation. Please consider that we wrote and edited with complete respect in mind.

If there are any mistakes or inaccuracies, please reach out to contact@seattleindies.org.

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Game: else { return home; }
Team: Andrew Hermus, Andrew Hung, Andrew McPherson, Josh, Nick, Steven, and Robert

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A: Are you working with the same folks as last time?

Steven: We’ve got most of the same people. Sarah couldn’t make it but we found Josh and Nick. We tried to do as much preparation as possible. What we wanted to do is put everyone on certain roles within the project so there’d be no overlap and no conflicts.

Andrew McPherson: We let people pick roles on the team based on their interests. Rob wanted to learn Gameplay & AI stuff so that’s his focus. Our current idea involves working on building a home in the remnants of a city.

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A: What are your roles on the project?

Josh: I’m working on building the city. I’m an environmental artist. Forest. Not a lot of city stuff. We’re also going to try doing a black and white restriction.

Andrew McPherson: Level design, but also marketing. I’m a programmer by day. But Marketing is the last thing on a lot of people’s minds, so I wanted to start doing that from the beginning.

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A: What tools are you using?

Andrew McPherson: Discord, Git, and Trello. And Unity. Everyone uses it.

Josh: It’s not really user-friendly.

Andrew McPherson: But it does have plenty of Stack Overflow questions. The dumb questions you’re too afraid to ask are on there.

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A: Speaking of dumb questions…
You probably don’t have a name yet?

Andrew McPherson: We’ll get back to you. The game is about a robot that goes back home to recharge. We’re going to paint the world with a dark theme, and the home is brightly lit.

Josh: We’re starting small and building up a solid plan before we add too much.

Emily: Yeah, it’s better to have stretch goals than scope creep.

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Game: Fashion Conductor
Team: Cade, Carter, Charlie

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E: What were your motivations
for getting involved in the jam?

Charlie opted to network, practice developing after graduating school, and connecting.

Charlie further explained that their game design was around an original idea: A train cart gathering a home as a larger train. Now they have pivoted to a platform-y car assembly game where you have to satisfy interior design requests. “Order fulfillment for each train car’s interior design, the player must move from train car to train car to meet the criteria of the occupant’s needs and desires. After completion, the player continues jumping from car to car. Furniture from the previous round remains. Small, maybe two carts next to your home, and it progressively zooms out as you complete more.”

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E: What are you hoping to get out of the experience?

Charlie: “Here to make contacts, to meet people with expertise in areas of technology I’m unfamiliar with.”

Carter attended for the experience. “It’s like a bunch of working studios all functioning at once to absorb ideas from. There are so many variations of skill sets around. There’s no way to avoid learning. Sharing information is definitely the biggest part of it for me. Even if we can’t get very far with our limited team being all programmers, it’s still learning.”

Cade: “Also experience, hopefully, learn some things about Unity I haven’t come across before. The networking potential of jams like this is incredible.”

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Game: Deco Dash
Team: David, Jeff, Marshall, and Nina

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E: What are your roles?

David did programming/gameplay code, implementation, and technical art like shaders.

Jeff is a game designer for systems content and levels working with a studio in the UK and is a level designer for this project. “Generally, this is the role I always fall into [on the “Sticky Biscuits” team, mainly] scrambling to bring together Nina’s work and integrate it with David’s code.”

Marshall is a world designer working for a Triple-A studio. Marshall’s role on the “Sticky Biscuits” team is fulfilling whatever gap or role in the group as needed, this time around as a character artist. “I’m doing all of the character modeling and animation, maybe some props and animations in support of our environment designer.”

Nina is a mobile game designer. For this project, Nina did 3D modeling and primary environment design.

They’ve been collaborating under this name for 3-4 years now. They generally trade or change individual members of the team with each game jam.

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E: What’s your theme?
Did you establish an idea, then pivot?

David: “Previously we’ve worked with single player, slower paced games.”

Nina: “We typically did artistic slower pieces, now we’re aiming for something more fast-paced and competitive in a multiplayer.”

David: “We had more specific ideas that we were going to leverage but sort of… went to the side once we heard the theme.”

Nina: “There are things we wanna do, like outside the jam like a narrative but takes a sideline for the jam’s theme.”

Jeff: “For us it’s really throwing things at the wall, like doing an exorcism of ideas.”

David: “First person looter, maybe as a description?”

Nina: “Or competitive home decoration game.”

David: “You’re trying to find the stuff that you need to decorate your home with.”

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E: How are you scoring that out?

David: “It’s up to four players locally; you each have your own room and when you start your room is a mishmash of random decorations. You know through some mechanism there is some style you’re moving towards, looking through other rooms to find pieces that meet your criteria. Then at the very end, it will do grading based on how your room is decorated in favor of your theme. All red stuff, sports items? You got them and built the theme for your home.”

Nina: “If you have things that match, it adds to your score, if you have items that don’t fit the theme it’s a negative to your score.”

David: “If you have something that clashes with your theme like a purple ray gun, you gotta get that out of there as soon as possible before the scoring happens.”

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E: Like looting?
But also dumping as a mechanic
for things that don’t fit your theme?

David and Nina: “Exactly!”

David: “You’ll be wandering around each room, grabbing stuff you need or stashing things you don’t.”

Nina: “If you’re sneaky you can pull it off without people noticing.”

David: “Yeah, or someone takes the cool lamp you wanted and placing it somewhere else, so you have to chase them, some kind of antagonizing mechanic for messing with other players. I think we’ve really fallen into a pretty well-defined structure of the process and workflow in which we make these things. We have a really good intuition for how we want to make these things. We generally get the same buckets of features working at the same time, the first night we typically have an interface where we can move a cube around.”

Nina pointed to Marshall.

Nina: “Typically, he stays all night. He’s our night watch.”

Everyone laughed.

David: “Yeah, it falls into this uncanny pattern of how much we complete every year.”

Jeff: “Yeah, last year we did this last Seattle Indies Game Jam, we had this creature mating game where they get together, make babies. You’re a mad professor trying to splice them together per the requests of your customer. We wanted to do this thing where so much of the game was entertaining but you weren’t playing it. It was easy to get carried away watching the monster, but we decided to try to implement this sandwich and lunch mechanic to pause the action and pace it.”

Nina: “It’s a fun mechanic, where you have to click on the sandwich quick enough to [win].”

Marshall: “I think there was this overall idea of wanting to eject the player out of the gameplay. So we had this idea of what if you have to click this giant sandwich that blocks your view.”

Nina: “Originally our idea was to zoom out, have the player be a character model eating the sandwich. But since we didn’t have time for doing that we wound up just… throwing a giant sandwich up on the screen. Gameplay wise obstructing the gameplay was better, forcing the player to rapidly click the screen. It worked better than our original idea.”

Marshall: “Yeah, it was really a happy accident that worked much better than cutting the whole feature. It’s first person, akin to an apt comparison of whose the daddy? Fully 3D.”

Jeff: “The whole thing as framed as a game show, like a goofy duck game Dystopian thing. Commentary with half time, that sort of thing. Funny animal-people characters…”

Marshall: “…Like a squid with a buff human bod.”

Nina: “We originally thought the player would move through the rooms by stairways or elevator, but the elevator seemed like too big of a scope. So just flat layout for now unless we have extra time to branch out into other layouts.”

Jeff: “It’s an example of how to explore something that sounds funny, like a moment of two players stuck in an elevator together, but too expensive.”

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Cameron, Julie, Max, and Olin

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A: What’s the plan?

Olin: “You’ll play as a penguin and build your house out of rocks by putting them in a circle. Penguins do that. And other penguins will try to steal them from you so you have to build and defend. You squawk to attack the penguins to get them to go away.”

Julie: “And I’m making the penguin!”

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A: What are you working on right now in Unity?

Olin: “I’m working on the mechanics for moving and picking up rocks.”

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A: It looks like it’s coming along?

Olin: “Well, I’m still learning. Mainly, I’m learning how to work more quickly, because there’s not much time to flesh out the idea. Fortunately, this space [in Building 4’s Annex space of Pacific Science Center] is a much better space to work in for me. It’s quieter.”

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Game: Beyond Home
Team: Max, Ray, Rob, Terence, and Terry

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E: How many jams have you attended?

This was Terence’s 7th time at a jam.

This was Terry’s 6th year at a jam.

Rob has been attending since the 2014 Global Game Jam, five Global Game Jams overall, with an estimated fifteen jams in total.

Ray had previously attended the Seattle Indies Game Jam.

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E: What were your expectations before the jam?

Terrence: “I had kind of an idea. I go to the jams to learn a specific thing. I wanted to learn a lot more about character modeling and rigging. What’s a game that does a lot of that with short animations? So I thought a sneaking game was best for that. I like sneaking games, they’re fun. The little girl is trying to escape robots, trying to get home.”

Terry: “We did some concept art, talked it over, really liked the idea.”

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E: What are you hoping to get of it?

Ray: “A few things, experience to put on my portfolio slash resume. Other things are personal experience in terms of knowing how to work with teams, artists. Since I’m working with Terry. He knows a lot more than me programming, so I can learn a lot from him. It’s like a free internship for two days.”

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E: Would you say Global Game Jam
is like a simulated crunch?

Terrence: “No, Absolutely not! Jams aren’t like crunch! I hear that comparison a lot. They’re not like simulations of crunch because they’re not six months of unsustainable, unhealthy labor demands. Sometimes at work we’ll stay a few extra hours, for three days at most. But we always rework our deadlines and workflow to avoid doing that. They have a really strict work hard, go home policy. They really do enforce if you’re there too late, they really do prioritize our health.”

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Game: Out of the Ashes
Team: Craig, JT, Peter, and Rich

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A: What are your plans this time around?

Craig: “Like last time, we’re going to make a game with a lot of text. It’s going to be in a house where you need to build the ideal house so you’re looking through other people’s houses to get resources. You’re going to look through a lot of random crap to form your home and learn about other homes to figure out what you care about.”

JT: “I can show you what I’m working on. I loaded the Unreal default level and I’m taking a lot of the stuff out that we won’t need, like the gun.”

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Game: Homing missiles coming home
Team: Erfan, Kasra, and Pouria

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A: I see your team is working
with the same methodology as before.

Erfan: “Yes, we are brainstorming first to take out all the bad ideas. You don’t want to make the game too big or you won’t be able to complete it.”

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A: It’s like the Abe Lincoln analogy.
If you have 8 hours to chop down a tree,
you should spend the first 6 hours sharpening your axe.

Pouria: “Exactly. We’re brainstorming ideas right now before we pump out content.”

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Game: Rain City
Team: Betty, Jupiter, Macaulay, Michael, and Zach

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E: What are your skill sets?

Michael (he/him) teaches creative coding to elementary school kids. He’s the graphics designer and level designer on the team and a general programmer.

Zach (he/him) is an independent programmer by day, specializing in gameplay systems on the project.

Betty (she/her) is a dance instructor by day, and animator and 3D character artist on the project.

Jupiter (they/them) is a student in game art at AIE, as are everyone else on the team, and is the environmental artist on the team.

Jupiter: “The theme of the game is it’s about a cat walking along the sides of buildings in a Seattle-esque [environment and the goal is to] get to their home apartment. It’s supposed to be a dreamy version of Seattle, very rainy, and environmental. There will be different music and vibes for each area as the cat moves through, bars, cafés, slowly telling the story of a pet going home.”

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E: Is this your first jam, global or otherwise?

Zach: “We’ve had game jams as part of our school program and some of us have been to other game jams.”

Michael: “Second official jam. First one was Pizza Jam.”

Jupiter: “Went to Global last year.”

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E: What are you hoping to
get out of this new experience?

Betty: “Trying to hone in my abilities to time manage. We’re usually given bigger time frames, in other situations, so this is nice to be constrained on time. It allows for growth and practicing better management.”

Michael: “I don’t know if I’m looking to get anything specific out of the jam. I just know I love working with these people and experiencing a jam. Compared to an environment of one game all the time, this is just an atmosphere I couldn’t say no to. I just love making games”

Zach: “For me, personally, there’re two big priorities. The first of which is to have fun. We have about five more months till we graduate, so this is the last jam where we can just have a good time. It’s also a good portfolio piece.” The team agreed. “I’m personally working on staying focused and keeping on track.”

Jupiter: “I think my goal is probably efficiency. We have two days and I’m trying to build a cityscape!” Jupiter laughed. “Making things that can be easily kit-bashed into larger settings.”

Betty: “I should’ve been UVing while I modeled that cat.”

Michael: “Oh, we don’t need UI… that’s so nice.”

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Saturday
Midnight

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Game: Fight The Dungeon
Team: Kobey

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E: Tell me about yourself.

Kobey is an indie developer at Kaio interactive, “a one-man team doin’ my own thing, and my third Global Game Jam.”

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E: Pitch me your project.

Kobey: “I had this idea stuck in my head two weeks ago. I do my 9-5, go home, then do a 6-10 at my own indie job, not leaving home a lot of time for side projects. Game jams give me a break to do that. I’ve wanted to make a game solo as a programmer but a concept that didn’t need art. It’s a simple turn-based RPG that’s entirely UI-based using dice rolls.”

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E: How are you tying that into the theme of this GGJ?

Kobey: “No idea yet, pretty hard set on this game, just using this as an excuse to work on my own thing. Dunno how it’s gonna work yet, but hopefully I can incorporate it effectively. It’s about trying to do something I want to do. Game design is where I’m trying to grow and doing a game solo means I’ve got to do everything. It’s about flexing my art skills, too, since I’m so used to being just a coder.”

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Game: subirbia
Team: Mary, Matthew, and Tom

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A: Have you been to any game jams before?

Tom: “I’ve been to quite a few game jams before. This is my second Seattle Indies event. I’ve been working on games for most of my life. Mainly rooted in classic retro games. I grew up in that. I’m kinda meh to a lot of the new AAA stuff, but the indie surge about ten years got me excited again. I left Microsoft and started an indie studio, worked on that, did some Global Game Jams while working at HairBrained Schemes, working on BA, focusing on game design and game programming at Global Game Jam. Mary is working with me on this project.”

Mary: “I’m a programmer. I’m new to Unity. I usually program in Javascript and recently made a game in HTML.”

Tom: “So we’re working on a game that’s like the Sims meets Flappy Birds or Angry Birds. It’s kinda wacky, but the idea is that you’re a bird and you’re picking things up to build a nest and then building on top of that. Sue is doing the nest mechanics. I’m gathering assets. We’re streamlining pipelines so everything can come together faster with self-contained ideas, stuff comes out of it naturally. We’re thinking of a side-scroller environment.”

Mary: “We considered a top-down perspective.”

Tom: “If it’s 3D, that’s a lot of work, and it would make it too complicated, with a degradation of the return on investment for the effort involved. We can still get the same effect with a side view.”

Mary: “It would be cool to see the inside of the nest.”

Tom: “The trick with these [game jams] is the core gameplay should be tight, simple, and just a good game you can implement quickly, instead of building up this chunk of stone, and then having to cut away a lot of things. Do the thing you want and polish that instead of adding more, then add more later, if you have time. Like, you have the gameplay and then there’s a layer on top, like XCOM, and a number of other games, that feeds in parameters to it within the perimeters. You can have a vision on that where those ideas would be cool, but you have to lay the groundwork down. The ideal size of a team is around 2 to 3 people.”

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Game: My Home Is Mobile
Team: Paul, Shea, Levi, and Macaulay

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E: Tell me about your team.

Levi (he/him) worked on the player controller, extra supporting programming wherever needed, as an environmental programmer.

Paul (he/him) worked on supporting programming and pixel art, general purpose game programming, and some enemy AI.

Shea (he/him) teaches kids coding and was the primary programmer on the project with a focus on UI.

Shea: “We’re three programmers who came together without any artists, and learning how to adapt with that. We’re all students studying game programming at AIE.”

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E: How many game jams have you attended?

Shea: “This is my fourth.”

Levi: “Second.”

Paul: “Second as well.”

Shea: “I participate in ones at home, like Pizza Jam. It seems like every time I come to a game jam there’s this huge boost of motivation that comes afterwards. After sitting down and making nothing but games for 48 hours, going back into the classroom it’s just… yeah, it’s great. The first time I ever used Unity was last year, and my school was basically like… “What is this guy doing?” The game jam gave me the motivation to move on and now I’m considered one of the better students in the class thanks to that.”

Levi: “Increase my skill in programming, networking with more experienced professionals, and build friendships in the industry. “

Paul: “Same thing as Levi, but I came here with the express purpose of making something that forces me to make simpler ideas. Getting into a groove of making good game loops and that’s something you can absolutely do in a smaller time frame. The majority of my purpose here is to have fun in making a game and put it into my portfolio. Networking is just a bonus, it’s all fun and games.”

Shea: “We had no idea what we were going to do coming into this. I think that’s the better way in my opinion to do this.”

Paul: “Generally, the best way to do game jams is to step in with your own idea then step into the theme and wrap your idea around it. Or the opposite, it’s one or the other, and you’re forcing your idea around something else. A box inside a box, same idea as programming: Storage containment.”

Levi: “I like being dropped into an idea without prior expectations to see where my brain goes with it. My brain went automatically to a game where you throw a house into another house.”

Shea: “Basically, you’re on a ship that’s running out of fuel, a lot like gravity ghost trying to use planetary orbit to get back home.”

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Game: None
Team: Scott

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A: Can you tell me about your plans?

Scott: “I’m working solo. I considered trying to find a team this time, but I decided against it. People ask me what my skill set is, and it’s mainly art and programming, so slap it together, and I’m a generalist.”

“I’m working with Unity. I just imported Unity’s Wind Ridge City asset and I bought this truck asset from Sketchfab for the game. I was thinking about buying it already, but I decided to buy it so I could try it out. The truck and this game is like a sub-game for a broader game I’m working on, where there will be a robot chase scene. He’s looking for home, so it fits within the theme. Mechanically, it’s not related, but narratively it is. I’m just looking to avoid feature creep.”

“Right now, I’m working on the AI chasing after you. I’m deciding on how to implement stuff like UI and the menu system. There’s a dust particle effect that was included along with the truck asset. There’s also a happy little accident, if you will, where those clouds are Unity prefabs, so I’m just working out the kinks on this right now.”

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Saturday
2AM

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Game: House Haunters
Team: Alvaro, Beverly, Camden, Daniel, Fernando, Sam, and William

William: “The idea is that we’ve got these spooky ghosts and the house is going to be sold, but you’ve gotta spook the people away. We’re looking to add the ability for pentagrams and to add in mechanics to have lights you can turn on randomly, so that way when people are in the room, you can turn off the lights and scare them away. You can take different forms. It’ll be interesting to build. Fernando’s philosophy is to start off light. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. We’re tentatively deciding to call it “Spooky Roommates So You Spook Them Away.””

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Game: Billed to Order
Team: Avery, Ed, John Michael, Patrick, Steve, Tomas, and Victor

Patrick: “We’re working on a birdhouse game and I’m doing music integration. I’m focusing on this because for most game jams, the music is usually a last-minute thing.”

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Game: Fido
Team: Daniel, Erika, Eugene, Evan, and Kyle

Daniel: “We’re working on a game where you’re in a forest and you’re trying to get home. There’s a monster or monsters in the woods as well and you have a limited inventory of things to throw at the monsters. “I’ll be working on monsters tomorrow.””

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Game: What a Drag
Team: Andrew, Benjamin, Bry, Corwin, Handa, and Jennifer

Ben: “I’m working on the “Drag the House Along” game. It’s going to be like Don’t Starve. You collect different things that represent money, comfort, or fun, which all plays into the idea of “what does home mean to you?” It’s how well you do and how you collect your house. I’m programming in Unity and focusing on gameplay aspects. One other programmer on the team will handle camera and movement. Bry and I were working on finalizing the core design so we’d be ready tomorrow. We’ve got three artists. It’s weird because the last jam there were no artists. It’s going pretty well, though. The core concept is finalized and we’ll just go from there.”

“Tomorrow, we’re going to focus on development and making sure the core color palette is all there. We’re going to follow the mantra of getting most everything done tomorrow, where you should get the core mechanics done the first night [Friday night] and the gameplay and other systems done the second night [Saturday night], then you’re a lot better off. The final day [Sunday] should be all about finishing the game and not creating the game. The final night’s key to success is all about the source material, getting the source document, core technology, and communication channels.”

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By around 3AM, there were only about four teams left working.

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Saturday
8AM

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At 8AM, there were about six teams working.

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Game: Fashion Conductor
Team: Cade, Carter, Charlie

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E: How’s the delta for today?
What’s the progress you managed to pull off?

Carter: “Train cars are still individual people’s homes! Running around, making people’s homes better, based on what they want at the time. They’re finicky. It changes a lot. You reorganize the home.”

Charlie: “It’s on a time limit, really, managing expectations and desires to get as many points as you can. If we have extra time to keep going on the project we’ll add a way to get leveling up, powering up, or checkpoints for more time.”

Cade: “I’ve mostly been working on furniture sprites. I’m pretty confident about the assets so far, given I’m not an artist.”

Carter: “I like them, especially considering he’s not an artist.”

Charlie: “I’ve been working on scripts, player movement, start screen, end screen, overall code architecture, and coordinating with sound people.”

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E: What is the music direction anyway?

Carter: “It’s Sims inspired. Kind of upbeat. Very quirky. But also, kind of in-sync with the train.”

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E: Would the music integrate with the pacing
of train sound effects, horns, and et cetera?

Charlie: “Exactly! We’ll see how annoying it gets!”

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Game: Homing missiles coming home
Team: Pouria, Erfan, and Kasra

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A: How’s the game going?

Pouria: “Good. We just finished brainstorming and will start working on the game soon.”

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A: I was just editing your team’s section
and how your team likes to brainstorm first.

Pouria: “It’s important. You don’t want to just jump right in. You might change a little bit before you’re done but you should have most of it done beforehand.”

Erfan: “Hey, do you mind if I show you what we’re working on?”

The notebook contained sketches of four missiles.

Erfan: “What we’re planning on doing is having four missiles that are looking for “home.” Their objective is to avoid tanks and other obstacles on their way back home. It will become gradually more difficult. What do you think?”

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A: I like the idea that the missiles are going home
and I also like how they’re avoiding what missiles usually do,
which is going into tanks. I also like your drawings.
Will you have four colors like your standard red, yellow, green, and blue?

Erfan: “We’re thinking of going with different colors. They will also go to their own home base.”

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A: Oh, so the, say, the yellow missile can only go to the yellow base?

Erfan: “Exactly.”

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Game: else { return home; }
Team: Andrew Hermus, Andrew Hung, Andrew McPherson, Josh, Nick, Steven, and Robert

Josh: “I’m making the city. It’s just graybox stuff right now. We’re limiting the scope to just the space you can travel within the time limit mechanic we have. We’re going with a visual aesthetic similar to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which should be fun because I’m used to doing environmental work. We have three programmers on the team, so I can just go in, and feed them assets based on what they’re done with what I’m working on.”

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Game: Osmosis Bones
Team: Cameron, Dan, Drew, Jeff, and Macaulay

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A: What’s your game about?

Jeff: “It’ll be like Star Fox on rails, but with the heart and blood vessels. Right now, it’s just graybox tubes, so it looks kinda boring, but boring’s better than broken. I’m a programmer and I’m working on spawning objects.”

Cameron: “I’m working on 3D modeling.”

Jeff: “We also want to add in narration, if we have time.”

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Game: BEE BUDZ
Team: David and Matt

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A: What are you working on?

Matt: “We’re working in Pico-8! Right now, I’m working on the buzzing sounds, and our game is about being a bee and collecting things for the hive.

David: “I’m doing coding. We were looking to join a larger team [and work in Unity or Unreal], but there were already too many cooks in the kitchen of their games, so we shifted gears.”

Matt: “Oh, hey, David, what if we go with a space shooter side-scroller effect here?”

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Game: We’re Off to Slay the Wizard
Team: Evan, Hornet, Jessica, Travis, Wendy, Xan, and Xander

Jessica stopped over to the volunteer desks. “It’s going well! We’ve got a graybox, now I just need to borrow a laptop to import all the artwork that I drew.”

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Saturday
Noon

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Game: else { return home; }
Team: Andrew Hermus, Andrew Hung, Andrew McPherson, Josh, Nick, Steven, and Robert

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E: What’s the premise?

Andrew McPherson: “The premise is you are a robot who can only charge at home. You venture around a post-apocalyptic Seattle and we’ve set up some quests, chores for you, but eventually you have to get back home to recharge fully.”

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E: Any surprises?
Staying within scope?

Andrew McPherson: “We’ve worked with each other before and have a good idea of what each other can do. Previous jams have given us an idea of our respective competencies. This is definitely larger in scope than past projects so… Ask again tomorrow! So far so good.”

Robert: “Yeah I think it’s been going well especially considering we have… A larger team of seven?”

Andrew McPherson: “Yeah.”

Robert: “We planned pretty early on how we’d delineate responsibilities and have our respective domains to work on. We find doing that is great to work together and collaborate efficiently with this many people.”

Josh: “I think we’ve kept in pace, every department have been really quick. We’ve agreed on writing really fast. We’ve got about half of our assets done thus far and mostly into level design and implementation of all the art. I think we’ll have a playtest-able demo before or around dinner.”

Andrew McPherson: “Before the day is done, at least.”

Josh: “We’ll have the bulk of the work done today, I think.”

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Game: Melancholy Moyo
Team: Danilo, Joshua, Kevin, Misty, Riley, Rabecca, Sheridan, and Tye

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E: Introduce yourselves.

Danilo (he) is a Masters student at Digipen, Compsci, doing Co-Gameplay Programming and Design on the game. (Twitter and Website).

Josh (he) is a Project Manager at Impeller Studios, doing Project Management and acting as Producer on the team.

Kevin (he) is a Masters student at Digipen, Compsci.

Misty (she) teaches Animation and Character Rigging at AIE and has the same role on the team, specifically, as a prop modeler. (Twitter, Instagram)

Riley (he) is a Masters student at Digipen, Compsci, doing co-gameplay programming and animation integration on the team. (Twitter)

Rabecca (she) is a Test Analyst at Google, doing 3D Environment Art and Narrative Design on the team. (Twitter, Instagram.)

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E: Give me a quick pitch
for what you’re all working on.

Misty: “So, you’re essentially this bunny who falls off their home island, we’re calling this Melancholy Moyo. You help your neighbors and get rewarded with progress getting you closer to home. The colors are really muted and grow more vibrant with everyone you help, eventually, you realize the theme is that the community helps make a home feel more alive and authentic.”

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E: Was this based on ideas that were
pre-existing before the jam, then brought up
when the theme was announced?

Josh: “I think once I signed up for the jam and started thinking of ideas I wanted to create a game about. I know that right now Rabecca was sharing that a big theme of the game is empathy and creating characters that convey that. I had a lot of past experiences mentoring young high school students and saw that the students didn’t really believe in themselves. Either because they came from a broken home or didn’t have encouraging figures. So with this game, getting home is about figuring out who you are by traversing other people’s homes and their experiences. Through that you become happier, building relationships and doing something greater than yourself. This is definitely contributed through via everyone and it has drastically evolved. I’d say that I’m really impressed in brainstorming and narrative design yesterday, it was interesting to see how many people different expressed what home meant to them, and we’re excited to see what we can do in 48 hours.”

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Julie, Olin, Max, and Cameron

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E: What’s the pitch?

Julie: “The inspiration was a clip from Frozen Planet narrated by David Attenborough. The penguin is building a nest out of pebbles and it’s really hard. It means defending against thieving penguins as well as working with pebbles as a difficult construction material.”

Olin: “If you can’t build and defend that home in time for the next generation, your egg, it’s game over.”

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E: How’s the delta since last night?

Olin: “Last night, I was getting the main character movement, which went down well. This morning, I started to work on the enemy penguin AI. So just getting the penguin to both, the player and the enemy interacting with the pebbles and moving them around.”

Julie: “I feel like yesterday, I didn’t get a whole lot of total art done, other than the concept. And establishing the core game mechanic, so this morning, we wrote the script, and we’re getting a narrator in to be our David Attenborough-alike. The script is a lot of fun.”

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E: So you’d say that adds another layer to the game?

Olin: “It’s a pretty big element, yeah.”

Julie: “I guess yeah, it’s more story based so we really just… We really like David Attenborough!”

Olin: “Yeah, it’s a very sort of slow-paced gameplay with a penguin waddling around, so it’s a good way to keep the players’s attention and keep them well paced.”

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Saturday
2PM

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Game: Beyond Home
Team: Terry, Rob, Max, Ray, and Terence

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E: Give us an update since we last saw you yesterday.

Terry: “It’s about a small girl traversing alien environment trying to escape to go home, vaguely consistent with what we started out with. So, my impression overall is that we’ve gotten a clearer and clearer idea of that concept. A lot of things to flesh out, like, for example, we knew we’d want an armband to give an idea of the presence of enemies which is something we only worked out a few minutes ago. So, the closer an enemy is, the closer you are to dying and the color of the armband corresponds to that. Just taking the game concept and fleshing it out.”

Max: “I do the sound and music for the game. I’ve just been pumping out assets and writing tunes. I really just started getting some pieces in for background noise. I work at Nintendo, but I don’t do sound there, I do some knowledge base support and web development. But by night I’m a technical sound designer. I’ve got a website at maxsandler.com.”

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Game: Billed to Order
Team: Avery, Ed, John Michael, Patrick, Steve, Tomas, and Victor

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E: Tell me about your roles on the project.

Avery (he) is a Microsoft QA contractor by day, and on the team, is the audio engineer and supporting programmer on the team. (Website)

Ed (he) works at Microsoft and is the lead programmer on the project. (Website)

Patrick (he) is an audio programmer and composer Seattle Indie originally from Texas, working in Wwise for audio implementation. “People are always creating cool sounds, and I’m integrating them into the game to keep the game interactive and fun. My website is PatrickAllred.com.”

Steve (he) is a Technical Artist at Niantic and is the technical artist on the team, as well. (Website)

Tomas (he) is a 3D Environmental Artist and 3D artist on the team. (Website)

Victor (he) is Player Support at Keyboards Riot. On the team: Video FX, UI, and art. (Website)

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E: What’s the premise?

Patrick: “So we are developing a game where you basically build birdhouses for birds. They make requests and you can use different items you have around to build them the birdhouses. If you mess up, mistakes stay, giving it character towards the end but it’s more like You Don’t Know Jack games that make people laugh or happy instead of raw scoring.”

Avery: “Yeah, with some focus on levels of quality.”

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E: Riffing off the theme
or ideas external to the jam?

Avery: “We all just sort of jointly sat together, after hearing the theme, and decided on our best concept.”

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E: How’d the first day go as a recap,
and what’s progress been like so far?

Patrick: “The first day was a lot of brainstorming, so we all adjourned to get some rest. Today, we’re really crunching it, and getting it all built up.”

Steve: “I think today we were just trying to get things going. We had some issues with Git, but Ed’s been really on it. Mostly just getting art assets going.”

Avery: “This is both me and Patrick’s first time in a group setting working with Wwise.

Patrick: “We also have another sound person doing all the sound effects.”

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E: Any specific direction you’re hoping
to move toward for sound design?

Avery: “We were discussing having a sort of funk genre thing going on?”

Patrick: “Funky Pink Floyd!”

Avery: “But really, mostly just assembling UI menu sounds, that sort of thing.”

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Game: Fido
Team: Daniel, Erika, Eugene, Evan, and Kyle

Daniel: “I’ve been working on a 3rd person mode all night! I might be available to prototype by 4pm.”

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Game: Finding Home
Team: Aaron, Andy, Budi, Eduardo, Jacob, Jaime, Karen, Mark, Miles, Seth, and Tanisha

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A: Hey Budi! Can you tell me
everyone’s roles on your team?

Budi: “I’m the project manager and producer, but really, I’m the waterboy! Hah! But, let me introduce you to everyone. Let’s see who’s available… Let’s start with one of the developers, Eduardo.”

Eduardo: “We realized early on that if there are 100 people and 50 people make teddy bears, that’s not good.”

Budi: “So everyone brainstormed ideas based around the central theme. I asked everyone what they thought of when they thought of “home” and we recorded the words. Comfort came up twice, so that’s where the name came from. So we thought about what kind of things are at home: records, and comfort items, like beds, and blankets. We continued brainstorming ideas. The music will let you know if you’re getting close. Tanisha over there created the logo. Oh, but it looks like Paxton might be able to chat!”

Paxton: “Well, I’m working on my own game [A Place of My Own], as well, so I can show you what I’m working on with both. For my game, I started off with a whiteboard in Twine and built from there. For our game, I helped draw up the prototype designs. Aaron is taking these drawings and putting them into the game as grayboxed level designs. Andy is working on the Xbox controller integration. We have some audio folks: Mark and Jacob. Budi checks on everyone to make sure they’re on task and not roadblocked. Mark is also working on the narrative design doc. Jaime is working on the inventory and Miles is working on the puzzle pieces I’m working right now in Blender to build the characters. Everything’s going good. Oh, here’s Aaron.”

Aaron: “I’m taking Paxton’s drawings and cut-outs and putting them into the game. This is all a great learning opportunity for me. I’m a student at AIE and I heard about it through them. This is my first game jam.”

Paxton- “Oh hey, any game pitches catch your interest?”

Anthony- “There’s a team working in Pico-8 that looks cool, but there are so many other teams that it’s kinda hard to keep track.”

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Game: Fight The Dungeon
Team: Kobey

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E: How’s your progress?

Kobey: “I got my first character playable class in. I still need to make actual enemies, but I have the game loop up for infinite enemies. It’s a roguelike; you keep fighting people, gain levels, to see how far you got. I was hoping to get encounters into the game. You might get enemies, a buff, a healing fountain. But I still have two more characters to make and four more enemies that might present a challenge to implement after. Then figure out my own art, at some point…”

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Game: My Home Is Mobile
Team: Paul, Shea, Levi, and Macaulay

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E: Just an update, how’s your concept changing up
from the gravity / orbital sling to home you had yesterday?

Shea: “You’re like a little house, floating around in space.” Shea demonstrated some orbital mechanics and pixel art. “Our biggest challenge was probably Levi going home sick. He won’t be back for this one.”

Paul: “There’re quite a few changes since yesterday.”

Shea: “I don’t know what happened last night, but I had a surge of genius in my sleep deprivation that led to inventing the gravity mechanic. What I’ve done today is mostly polished the art and general design of the game.”

Paul: “I’ve been working on animations and source control. I’m happy we’re using the ship we had for the original concept.”

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E: Can you explain the ship concept?

Paul: “Originally, we had a ship and we had to drop it in favor of a house idea. So we dropped the house idea in a sense that we… are using both, so I’m happy we get to use the asset with Shay’s gravity system.”

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Saturday
5PM

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To encourage global networked participation, Global Game Jam provides hour-long time slots to each site for game jammers to share their games at around the 24-hour mark of the event via the Mixer platform.

Seattle’s time slot was 5PM. The Seattle Indies volunteers gathered up as many game jammers that were interested in talking about their progress, even if they didn’t have minimum viable products available to display. Most game jammers were thrilled at the chance to share their work, and of the remaining few who weren’t initially excited in sharing their work ended up waiting in line because they were still interested in seeing how their progress compared on a global scale.

The Seattle site ended up filling the entire hour-long slot with game jammers still eager to share their project status to the world even after about one hour and fifteen minutes of sharing!

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Saturday
6PM

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Game: We’re Off to Slay the Wizard
Team: Evan, Hornet, Jessica, Travis, Wendy, Xan, and Xander

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A: How’d your presentation go on Mixer?

Xan: “Wanna see? We’re adding in sprites right not for reverse!”

Wendy: “I’m working on the UI, but this is the first time I’m doing pixel art.”

Xan: “I really like how your pixel art is turning out!”

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Game: Beyond Home
Team: Terry, Rob, Max, Ray, and Terence

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A: How’s it going?

Terence: “Good! I’m doing animation on the main character and just completed the animation up against the wall. Can you lean up against the wall? Like you’re breaking a barrier? No, the left side. OK, cool, thanks, I got it!”

Ray: “Hey, wanna see? I’m working on the walk cycles. I wouldn’t do this outside of a game jam but-”

Terence: “-Just get it done.”

Ray: “Yeah, if I did over three IF statements anywhere else, I’d do a different process, but for this game, it’s OK.”

Terence: “Now I’m doing the last animation! She’s standing up. She starts the game crouching and chained up but then the shackles unlock.”

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A: Do you want me to do a crouching motion?

Terence: “No, I got it, but thank you.”

Max: “Hey, I’m working on the sound design. I’m using WWise. I’m working on two projects: their project [Beyond Home] and their project [Nesting Season]. Audio people will often work on multiple projects at game jams, especially when there aren’t many audio people available.”

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Julie, Olin, Max, and Cameron

Olin provided his dev-log notes: “At this point we had gotten the audio files from our voice actor. It all sounded so good. I couldn’t wait to put it in the game. I was putting in the win and lose conditions to make the game a complete experience. Julie was working on the thief penguin.”

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Game: else { return home; }
Team: Andrew Hermus, Andrew Hung, Andrew McPherson, Josh, Nick, Steven, Robert

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The else { return home; } team, as referenced in the highlights essay, had team meetings with clearly-defined project objectives and tightly-paced status updates, which was closer to what you might find in a professional environment than you might expect in a game jam. They invited Anthony in on their Saturday evening meeting, which producer Andrew McPherson described as “a pow wow to wrap up the day.”

The team was comprised of seasoned game jammers, experienced game developers, and professionals that work for major companies, so they learned from past challenges, focused on what worked from previous jams, and organically adapted the style of professional team meetings into an indie environment. During this meeting, Andrew McPherson guided the discussion, while Robert handled taking notes and adding “to do” items into their Trello board.

Here is a glimpse into their meeting:

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Robert: “The main thing we need to work on is implementing the collectible items.”

Andrew McPherson: “Yes. We need one item per scene, with win conditions, like getting the Triforce. In the home scene, all items should be working. It’s not working on Mac. And we’re still working on robot parts.”

Josh: “Two of the hero parts still need to be completed. We have a working door.”

Andrew Hung: “Feels like art is generally on track.”

Nick: “The dog animations are actually turning out to be really hard. It’s just taking longer than I expected.”

Andrew McPherson: “No worries, it’s not like I sneeze and I make a chair.”

Steven: “I don’t want the walking to be monotonous for the person and the dog. The ambiance is done and “built” in FMOD. The robot noises are done.” [Context note: There’s a build process that integrates sound files into an FMOD package.]

Andrew Hermus: “For gameplay, I think I figured out the key pieces. I just created a bunch of events.”

Andrew McPherson: “There should be two gameplay conditions: Win and recharging.”

Robert: “Are we still thinking of having the dog act as a tutorial? I think we should hold that off until the end.”

Nick: “I need to get Dorg’s walk cycle out, then I can promise more.”

Andrew Hung: “I finished all the big art stuff. I can help out wiring in the animations..”

Robert: “The big thing I’m focusing on now is the transition from title screen to home, and making sure that game objects aren’t duplicated between home and city scenes.”

Andrew McPherson: “Let’s take a look at the stretch goal stuff to see if there’s anything that we can add into the Trello.”

Robert: “I’m taking notes and I’ll add everything into the Trello after the meeting.”

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Sunday
Midnight

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Every seasoned game jammer at Global Game Jam and Seattle Indies Game Jam recommended the same thing: Pace yourself throughout a 48-hour game jam weekend.

Regardless of the venue or sponsors, game jammers unanimously said that late Saturday night and early Sunday morning was the drop-off point for many new game jammers. They warned that this was when some people would have to quit their projects or leave their teams because they would begin to feel sick or too sleep-deprived to function correctly, even when on-site lodging is not provided. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the environment. Even with breakfasts, dinners, and other reminders for self-care provided by the venue throughout game jams, it can be difficult to internalize those reminders to take breaks and rest up.

Pushing yourself to exhaustion is strongly discouraged by any organizers related to any game jam. This is important to bring up, however, because it is easy to get caught up in the excitement of the event.

This note is included to give context as to why the remaining interviews are threadbare.

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Sunday
6AM

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Game: Out of the Ashes
Team: Rich, JT, Craig, and Peter

JT: “I got a little sleep after I was spinning my wheels doing the easy stuff. Then I woke up and everything made sense.”

Anthony: “Same here. When I was missing keys and what I was writing didn’t make any sense I knew it was time to get some sleep. I’m doing better now, though. What are you working on now?

JT: “I’m trying to figure out why the health bar isn’t working.”

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Game: None
Team: Scott

Scott stopped over to get some UI problems sorted out on his loading screen.

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Game: Homing missiles coming home
Team: Pouria, Erfan, and Kasra

Erfan was working on character designs. He was transferring his sketches from Autodesk to Photoshop for final coloring.

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Game: House Haunters
Team: Alvaro, Beverly, Camden, Daniel, Fernando, Sam, and William

William was working on playtesting with players to make sure that the ghosts and environmental pieces moved at a good speed.

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Julie, Olin, Max, and Cameron

Olin provided his dev-log notes: “Olin got all the animations working and the game was really starting to shape up. At this point, Max started working with us on sound effects. He and Julie went to the PACCAR IMAX Theater to record the penguin voices. After that Olin was making sure that the art and sound was implemented into the game. Julie spent some time adding more frames to various animations.”

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Sunday
10AM

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By this point in the weekend, both Anthony and Emily were exhausted from interviewing. We were fortunately joined by Marcel Dao, a student at AIE that wanted to help out and talk shop with the game jammers, so the remaining interviews were a collaboration between Marcel and Anthony. Anthony took notes while Marcel, highlighted as “M” using the same format as Friday and Saturday, asked questions.

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Game: We’re Off to Slay the Wizard
Team: Evan, Hornet, Jessica, Travis, Wendy, Xan, and Xander

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A: Hey everyone!
This is Marcel. He’s a student at AIE
and would like to ask some technical questions.

Xan: “Hi! I’m the producer. What are you most interested in learning?”

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M: I’m most interested in
how you did the fade to black.

Xander: “It’s actually a canvas image. I have a script called “fade to black.cs.” Here, I’ll show you.”

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M: How do you like
being the lone programmer?

Xander: “Alone, you have to manage everything on your own. Code bases can be very intensive, so it depends on how well your programs work with your computer.”

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M: Would you recommend a
desktop or laptop for game jams?

Xander: “Depends on what you need. It looks like many people around here are using laptops that are like this one, and it’s a good model, but it’s also more expensive.”

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Game: Homing missiles coming home
Team: Pouria, Erfan, and Kasra

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M: Are you using Unity?

Kasra: “Yes, we’re using 2012. It’s a good place to start learning. There are so many resources available.”

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M: What kind of skills
would you recommend learning?

Kasra: “C++ and C#. I’m working on the core components. Pouria is working on UI and scenes. Game jams are a great place to learn a lot of skills in 48 hours.”

Pouria: “And it’s addicting!”

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M: Do you have any recommendations
to prevent merge conflicts?

Pouria: “Git is solid, but keep everything consistent, in what you’re doing, and build a solid foundation.”

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M: Have you heard of Unity Collab?

Kasra and Pouria: “No.”

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M: It’s source control within Unity.

Kasra: “Is it like Git bash?”

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They went into technical details for a minute or so.

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M: Would you recommend
a desktop for game jams?

Kasra: “Artists like Erfan will bring in large tablets, but it looks like there aren’t too many desktops around here. Oh, how about them?”

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Game: Dino Baby
Team: Alexi, Forrest, Jonathan, and Kylie

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M: How did you bring that desktop in?

Jonathan: “A large suitcase!”

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M: Did you have any trouble with lighting?

Jonathan: “It’s actually fairly simple. Here, I’ll show you.”

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M: How did you do the minimap?

Jonathan: “It’s a separate camera with a raw image.”

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M: How about the dino walk cycle?

Jonathan: “Implementation in 2D and 3D are exactly the same. You model and rig, import it in, then you load it differently depending on what you need.”

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M: Are you going to work on the game
any further after the game jam?

Jonathan: “Probably not.”

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M: How are you handling the UI?

Jonathan: “We have a UI controller that draws a canvas.”

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M: How did you feel about the game jam?

Jonathan: “I was worried for Friday. We put in some solid work on Saturday. So today, we’re just putting on the polish. I think it’s because we have three programmers and one artist, so we were able to do a lot. Right now, we’re working on the navmesh, but it’s turning out great.”

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M: How have the time constraints impacted your workflow?

Jonathan: “You need to stay dedicated to your work. You need to get it done.”

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Julie, Olin, Max, and Cameron

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M: How long have you been using Unity?

Olin: “Casually for years, seriously for a few years. Right now, I’m working on the esc link component system. Objects are expensive, so if you have a bunch of objects, you can write to a Unity component to manage them.”

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Game: Billed to Order
Team: Avery, Ed, John Michael, Patrick, Steve, Tomas, and Victor

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Steve: “What are you most interested in learning about?”

Marcel: How did you do the shaders?

Steve: “I modified the screen space and you pivot if the object is driving away from that.”

Marcel: What’s your art inspiration?

Steve: “Stylized aesthetics are appealing especially real-time 3D games.”

Marcel: How hard are shaders?

Steve: “That depends on how interested you are in the work. If you’re interested, it’s interesting. If not, it’s hard. It’s all about codifying a defined style. They’re intrinsically following a rule set. Shaders are like rule sets.”

Marcel: How long have you been using Unity?

Steve: “Seven years.”

Marcel: How many jams have you attended?

Steve: “This is my 12th jam. What’s your focus?”

Marcel: “Programming.”

Steve: “What kind of behaviors are you interested in?”

Marcel: “RTS and AI. I want to make rhythm games.”

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Finding Home
Team: Aaron, Andy, Budi, Eduardo, Jacob, Jaime, Karen, Mark, Miles, Seth, and Tanisha

M: How do you do foley?

Jacob: “There’s a great video, The Magic of Making Sound, about the Warner Bros. Foley artists, where they show how they make snow.”

M: Do you have a favorite example of sound design?

Jacob: “Hyper Light Drifter.”

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Sunday
4PM

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Game: Nesting Season
Team: Julie, Olin, Max, and Cameron

Olin provided his dev-log notes: “We were very happy with what we had by this time. Not too much stress at all. Julie finished up the title image and icon along with some other basic UI elements. Olin implemented a difficulty slider that changes how often the thief spawns. Olin also put in some easter eggs involving some lines from the voice actor.”

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Sunday

6PM

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You can watch the entirety of the Closing Presentations on our Youtube channel.

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Save The Date

May 10th – 12th 2019!

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Our next game jam will be Friday May 10th through Sunday May 12th at Pacific Science Center.

For this next game jam, Anthony will be focusing his reporting efforts on the clutter of game jammers that made else { return home; } with a development log of their efforts to build their next game!

If you’re interested in volunteering time throughout the weekend, either in regards to writing or in any volunteer, feel free to reach out to contact@seattleindies.org.