News from the Global Game Jam 2014

Yes, this is a little late for this, since it's already been more than ten days. But there are reasons, perfectly valid reasons. One of them being I made a game.

And the other one is that I made another, much better game, with three awesome people.

But first the music:

The theme was an intriguing quote, "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.", one I associated with existentialism. There were many interesting takes within the more than 25 games we had in our venue this year, most of them much more enjoyable and game-oriented than my ideas - which were never meant to become a game.

As always, I had accepted my fate as one of them audio guys that can't make a game by himself and has no one that would take his wacky designs seriously, and looked around to find out how I can help with others' games. And so I did - for a while. In the meantime, though, I found time to make a game of my own on Twine, the text-based gamedev engine. I like what I tried to do, but I don't really like what I ended up doing, because even if I succeeded in doing what I planned to do, the plan was to make a simplified, castrated version of a grand (too grand for 48 hours) idea I had come up at the beginning: a game that shows itself to you as you are. By your choices and actions, you as the player give the game essential information about yourself (within the limitations of a variable of course; e.g. prejudice is +3, paranoia is -1, mood is +7 etc) and the game changes itself to accomodate what it perceives as "you" by adding and removing parts of itself from your access.

As I said, a grand idea. What I tried to do within a couple of hours was to simplify it down to a dialogue tree, and make the game change available answers based on just two variables, interest and close-mindedness. It turned out fun and a fairly nice showcase of the original idea, but not much more than that.

The best thing was that I managed to weasel myself into an awesome card game we have eventually called Hangimiz (Which of Us?). I wasn't a giant contributor, but I tried to do my best on the design and iteration discussions - and I made a kickass music for the video we shot for the final presentation. We are still working on this game, so I'd rather not make elaborate explanations for it just in case I look like an idiot in a month's time. All you should know is that it's a nasty, nasty game that will make you and your friends first laugh, and then fight. For now, follow our tumblog if you speak Turkish, and sit on your hands and wait if you don't.

Above all else, though, the great thing about jams is of course meeting awesome people and the focus on creation of games. It is pure pleasure for me to attend one and feel that distinct atmosphere of nerds and geeks working on things that are serious, fun and interesting all at the same time and every time one ends, I walk out wishing there was another one the next weekend.

See you next year, or hopefully before then. :)