One hour game jam

As I announced in the last blog post, I did some more one hour projects. There is the fantastic one hour game jam (#1hgj) which runs every Saturday evening (22:00 in my time zone). This #1hgj is a great opportunity to get in touch with some great gamedevs, strengthening your gamedev muscles and decision making abilities as well as developing a focus for what is the core idea of a game. So far I handed in two games, and thus had the chance to evaluate some new (for me) game mechanics with a minimum investment of time. Of course this means sitting down for one crazy hour, crunching the hell out of your keyboard and producing really awful hacks and not only spaghetti code, but true spaghetti dough code. Nevertheless this is a great opportunity which I can strongly recommend to any gamedev.

In the last two weeks I created two games for #1hgj 24 and 25. The first one is called chainsquares (theme "chain reaction", a puzzle mash up of Connect Four and Tetris with colors. The second (and much more evolved one) is called dissident. You need to maintain order and conformism in your parade and have to bring dissidents back in line. The game was inspired by a news show, I saw some hours prior to the jam about a North Korean nationalist parade. Obviously this is a futile attempt, but you might want to try to survive as long as you can.

Devmania

As it was incredible fun, rushing through the creation of those two games, I will definitely take part again. But next Saturday I won't - as there is the largest German indie gamedev meeting in Mainz, called Devmania. Unfortunately there is no internet connection, so I won't be able to join the #1hgj. Instead there will be an overnight contest at the Devmania for which I released already three great games.

I am looking forward to this event, especially to meet some people!