game jam

Game makers rejoice as your favourite game jam is back this month, and if last year over 47 countries participated in this crazy game hackathon with over 2000 games, expectations are high for this fifth edition too…

This year takes place the weekend that goes from 25-27th of January, 48hours of gaming love creation for designers and developers who are willing not-only to create joy under pressure but maybe get noticed and earn some funding for further development.

As it usually happens despite the growth and dimension of the event not all locations can give room or host as many people as desired so maybe it’s worth registering and checking if there are still places left to attend to from one of the already-created locations. More info this way.

Still from Madrid Game Jam 2011 (photo via MediaLab Prado)

“Stay ignorant, but once you’re going, carefully research and try what you’re doing”, these were the wise words Zach Gage gave the game developer community a few weeks ago right before “Fuck this” jam started. A game Jam centered around the theme of making a game in a genre you hate. “Through utter ignorance for conventions and hate for the established rules of a genre, beautiful things will happen“.

And beautiful things have come out of this jam indeed. From truck driver simulators which will make you experience the German Autobahn at night…. to sophisticated board games, moral titles or even first person research shooters.

Some of them unique, most of them enjoyable for a second or two but a few interesting ideas were proposed like Andrei Marks’s “Where are you“, where where one person is playing an FPS, and the other is playing a top down strategy game… something to explore really, although you’ll need to find a friend to play with.

One another “interesting” title is Gerop Orbital’s “Portraying The Terran Condition”, simply, a very surreal FPS you could end up loving.. if you like history on acid. The rest, can be explored this way, and hopefully we’ll get more “hated” games next year.

Global Game Jam 2013

Fuck this jam