2024-05-03
You can skip this paragraph. I have been making games for about 6-7 years now. In these years, I have participated in maybe three itch.io and one Ludum Dare. So, I'm not very accustomed to the culture of jamming. I have done plenty hackathons, but I think there are some fundamental difference in how game development stands out than the rest of software development. I have never been very high on gamejams either although I like the idea of games revolving around a certain theme. Plenty of beginner developers get stuck on taking an idea and working from there. The concept of a theme allows them to push past that initial imaginary (and mostly psychological imo) barrier. So it was fun to try out an offline jam for the first time. This is an attempt to document some of my experience.
Online Round
To participate in onsite round you had to get through a qualification process which is understandable for a university event's limited capacity. The same university was hosting ~7 other events simultaneously.
My friend Nabil had been pestering me for almost two years to participate in a jam. I was reluctant this time too and in my defense, I had my university presentations pending and a office deadline looming over my head. Nabil decided to just power through and wrote everything by himself the day before. I then did the level design and visuals (it looked real bad) with two hours left to spare. Honestly, I didn't have any hope of qualifying so it came as a surprise when Nabil told me that we made it through.
Onsite Round
Let's put away some preliminary information first. The other person on the team was Rabbani from Nabil's uni. The role distribution between me and Nabil was pretty unusual from what we usually do. This is the first time I have deliberately tried to focus more on the game design aspects and less on the programming. Usually, I'm a programmer-first gamedev. But I think Nabil wrote 95% of the code in this project and it worked out very well considering he works at a very quick pace. I also got to try out some different areas of gamedev. As for our game, it is now available at itch. I won't say much here but my main goal was to put out something relatable to people who will play this game. My hunch was that a game that explored the very familiar biriyani culture of Old Dhaka would be likeable by most people without much question, and it was.
Bangladesh and parts of South Asia are going through a heatwave for the past few weeks. IUT, the university, is almost entirely built with red concrete bricks which added more heat. I couldn't stay outdoors for more than 5 minutes without feeling dizzy. I had been to the campus on three different occasions prior to this and although it seemed ever beautiful, the conditions weren't suitable for appreciation at all.
We had to first sit in a PAX style booth allocated for us. Some people came to the booth and tried out our prototype. At around 11 am, we were taken to the Jam room. 9 teams out of the qualified 10 were present. Each team was assigned two tables to set up. Then the rest of the theme was revealed to us. We needed to somehow implement spell into the game. I somehow convinced my teammates to take that literally. It seemed logical to me that most people would go with magic spells. We had to stand out somehow, so I thought adding spelling words would be a fun and refreshing twist.