January 31, 2018 by Marc Beavan

2018 Guernsey Global Games Jam Aftermath

Jan 26th - 28th saw the 10th anniversary Global Game Jam with over 42k people taking part. Guernsey took part in its 4th jam, hosted once again at the Digital Greenhouse which is a fantastic, creative space with 17 people working on 6 different games. This blog details some of the creations…

What’s the story?!

This years Global Game Jam theme was ‘Transmission’.

Virus Outbreak

Our team consisted of:

• Me (Jase)
• Marc
• Charles Christian
• George Bott
• Owain Catton

The first 4 listed were code monkeys with much thanks to Owain who rattled out the artwork for us on Saturday which transformed it from placeholder spheres into something pretty damn cool.

The objective of the game is to spread throughout and conquer the host network by transmitting your virus cells from node to node to completely occupy the host network and overrun the other viruses that are attempting to do the same. You can transmit your virus from a captured node to any adjacent node by selecting the host node and tapping the connected nodes to send a virus cell on its way. Tapping the target cell multiple times sends multiple cells. Once users have picked up this control mechanism then it feels quite good, but most people are thouroughly confused when they play the game for the first time.

We were pleased with the game and it is certainly fun to play which is what they’re all about! It was going to be a turn based game which at some point on Friday night turned into a real time strategy game! This though made some things simpler and worked much better as a game. All in all we had much fun with playing around with the code that generates random networks and the code that arranges the network into a sensible layout. It was also interesting looking at the AI code evolve from quite a complex beast into something much simpler that was much more fun to play against. We’re planning to tidy up and release on itch.io at some point but the demo from the games jam is here.

Vaccine Command

Husband and wife indie combo Steve and Marie, from Old Doorways created Vaccine Command which turned out to be the most professional looking game of the jam. The objective of their game is to try and contain an outbreak as long as possible using missiles! As the virus spreads on the landmasses, you can fire missiles to cure a circular area. Vehicles leaving the infected areas and driving along the roads towards other landmasses can also carry the infection but can be forced to turn around by using road blocks. You can play it here.

Night Shift

The representative from the hosting venue, Ben Wratten and his team which also consisted of Joe Raleigh and Dave Wratten created a point and click adventure game about the world ending. The music and sound was very impressive on this one.

Call the bomb squad

Adrian Richie, from Makerspace Guernsey created game named “Call the Bomb Squad!” which linked an electronic device with a mobile app. The electronic device was made up of a series of challenge gadgets which needed to be completed as prompted by the mobile app, which represented the bomb squad communicating the defuse method with you. Adrian foresaw this as a sort of party game in which you could take it in turns to perform the tasks required to defuse the bomb. Being the most exciting thing to visually look at - the game attracted a lot of attention from those visiting the event!

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There’s also a video here.