My 5th GGJ!

Another Global Game Jam completed! Woohoo! Congrats to all who participated and successfully completed a working prototype in just 48 hours! Whether you worked solo, in a team of strangers, or a team you’ve worked with before; the experience gives valuable lessons that would hopefully push you closer to that game dev career you’ve always dreamed of. Again, CONGRATULATIONS to ALL!

This is my 3rd GGJ location – from Manila to Seattle and, now, Pittsburgh. This one is hosted by Pittsburgh IGDA (PIGDA). Every game jam inspires me to leave my comfort zone in order to experiment and explore. It is invigorating to be connected with passionate Game Developers of different professions, varying age groups, interesting backgrounds, and diverse interests.

For those who missed it, the keynote can be found here. The end of the video also shows the theme: WAVES! I like this theme. It’s very open – a lot of possibilities and interpretations. You can basically make any game and insert waves somehow.

My Team

Keeping my primary objective of working with people I’ve never worked with before; I teamed up with 4 people I met at the jam to form Team Surfer Babies!

(left to right) Sean, Addie, Francisco, Richard, and me

Together, we created Tiki Vs The Surfers! It’s a defense game where you use dolphins, mermaids, and whales to fend off surfers who want to defile your peaceful island!

Richard and Sean are the 2 amazing artists. Sean made the surfers (baby and tourist) and the Tiki while Richard made the weapons (dolphin, mermaid, whale), background, and UI. They collaborated to make the intro slideshow which explained why the Tiki was upset with the surfers. Addie was our talented musician and foley artist. She created every audio in the game. She even voice-acted for the dolphin and whale! Francisco and Francis (me) were the programmers implementing the different behaviors and integrating everyone’s work.

Here are some more pictures of the event.