Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the A MAZE game festival. Thankfully I was able to go to the Berlin Mini Game Jam A MAZE Edition 2019 with two friends.
First you might be asking what the heck is a Game Jam? Well its basically like a Hackathon for video games. You join a small team of people in the hopes of building a game within a day or two.
I had been attending some Game Dev Meetups in Berlin. This led to trying out this Game Jam and seeing some friends from the Meetups at it. When I confirmed on the Meetup App that I was going. It asked me to submit Themes that could be used at the event for people to develop a game around. Then I arrived at the Game Jam it was at a Coffee / Co-working space. A large diverse crowd of people were present. That were from a variety of different countries and work backgrounds. Such as Software Developers, Audio Engineers, Writers, 3D Artist, Traditional Media Artist, and even people with zero game dev & tech experience. Everyone had a common passion for learning the art of game making in community.
Start your Game Engines
The Game Jam started off with the event hosts introducing themselves, the Game Jam, and the Venue / Sponsor. After this the hosts had everyone meet 5 new people. This helped everyone to get to know each other and find possible team mates. Once everyone was acquainted the hosts had everyone use their mobile phones to vote on the submitted Themes. Then the results were revealed and the hosts explained how using these Themes was completely optional. The Game Jam had a very free loose environment. After this everyone quickly formed into teams.
Our team initially consisted of me and my two friends Evans and Brandon. Then thankfully David joined our group. We started brain storming game ideas and which Theme could be used. After some discussion and brain storming we decided to go with the Theme: The Pasta is Out of Control. Then everyone in the group shared what experience they had to contribute.
Team Master Chef
- David = Full time 3D Artist with Unity Experience
- Evans = Full time Unity Mobile Game Developer
- Brandon = Full time Software Developer with Unity experience
- Brandt = Sales Engineer with Game maker Studio Experience
After this we did some brainstorming and decided to try making a Mobile Android Game. The game play would focus on the player cooking pasta in frying pan. The goal was to cook the pasta as long as possible. Without letting the pasta burn, fall out of the pan, or get eaten by Gordon Ramsay.
Then we divided the tasks and started creating a mobile phone game using Unity.
My main task was first sketching out a basic concept idea of the game then creating the UX/UI. After this was finished I started searching for funny SFX’s & Music. At the end I was presenting the Game to everyone at the Game Jam.
Brandon worked on implementing the UX/UI frame work in Unity. David created the 3D models. Evans handled the programming in Unity. Developing the game was going pretty and we had a rough prototype but then we encountered our first major obstacle. Evans had experience with Unity but not with it’s physics engine. We were trying to create a game were tilting the phone would tilt the frying pan. Unfortunately the physics engine was having tons of problems. We were quickly running out of time with about 2 hours left in the game jam. So we simplified the game and focused it onto one axis. The player would just worry about tossing the pasta in the air and not tilting the frying pan. Thankfully Evans and David were able to debug & get this solution working so were able to release a finished game.
The Presentations
Then we presented Cooking with Ramsey (Yes, I know we misspelled his last name: Ramsay). The audience really liked how funny our game’s concept was and the hilarious sound effects combined with Gordon Ramsay’s face.
It was amazing to see the variety of games that were created at the Game Jam. Such as Text based games with a pick your own adventure element, 3D Adventure Worlds, 2D Pixel Games, PC Games, Mobile Games, and hilariously presented unfinished games. Some of the unfinished games had the goofiest presenters who were able to get the crowd laughing non-stop.
Overall the whole event was really fun, relaxed, and welcoming. If you want meet a lot of really cool passionate & talented people. I would highly suggest going to a local game jam. It’s a great a way to get plugged into your local game community.