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afterwards. “I worked on Coffee Bug for a solid
month after Coffee Jam,” says Andrew Reist.
“I wasn’t happy with the music, balancing, and
enemy behaviour. Sometimes a jam doesn’t
provide enough time to get the game to where
you want it to be.”
Paul Nicholas, meanwhile, finished work on
Low Mem Sky several months after the original
Demake Jam, with its final update emerging in
December 2018. “Whether I do further work
tends to depend on a few factors,” Nicholas
explains. “How close to my original ‘vision’ did
I get, how much did I enjoy making the game,
and how popular or well-received was it? For a
few of my jam games, I plan to take them
further as paid or commercial titles. Due to
the unexpected popularity of Low Mem Sky,
I’ve started developing a new game in a similar
vein, from scratch in MonoGame, so that I can
target mobiles as well.”
As Seven Siegel reiterates, though, game
jams have also resulted in several commercial
successes in their history so far. “My favourite
success stories are Surgeon Simulator from Bossa
Studios, and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
by Steel Crate Games,” he says. “The teams came
up with a great idea at Global Game Jam, it went
viral post-jam, and now both are game studios
working on great projects. And Fru, created in
2014 as a platformer that uses the Kinect – it
ended up getting released on the Xbox One.
It’s the kind of fun that can be created when you
start designing outside the box. These are great
examples of things that could only be created at
a game jam.”
SKY’S THE LIMIT
Taking place in August 2018, the Demake Jam
is based exclusively on the challenge of taking
a modern game and distilling it down to its
essentials – here, detailed 3D models become
pixel art, and vast open worlds are reworked as
flat 2D environments. Among last year’s entries,
for example, was Low Mem Sky, a demake of
Hello Games’ indie space sim, No Man’s Sky.
As we saw in Wireframe issue 12, Low Mem Sky,
made by developer Paul Nicholas, manages
to pack a remarkable number of space sim
features into the PICO-8 – a virtual console
defined by its 32kB cartridges and 128×128
pixel display. More impressively still, Nicholas
managed to create the initial build of Low Mem
Sky in just seven days.
“Game jams can provide a lot of exposure,”
Nicholas tells us. “Hello Games were even kind
enough to share a tweet of Low Mem Sky, and
included a video in their newsletter. The game
has acquired quite a lot of fans, which I’m very
grateful for. The challenge I now find is learning
to say ‘no’ to game jams – as beneficial and fun
as they may be, they can be an all-too-tempting
distraction from working on larger projects. The
trick is to find a good balance.”
AFTER-PARTY
Development doesn’t always end with a game
jam’s deadline, either – creators can often carry
on refining their work for weeks or even months
JAMS VS
CRUNCH
With so much talk in the
industry right now about the
perils of ‘crunch’, does the
culture of game jams – with
their built-in deadlines –
encourage people to push
themselves too far?
Game Jams are, Siegel
points out, “challenge-by-
choice”, while crunch time
is generally understood
to be mandatory overtime
enforced by a larger company.
“Game jams are soul-giving,
crunch time is soul-taking,”
Siegel says. “Saying game
jams are like crunch is like
saying Sonic and Mario are the
same game. Yes, on an outer
description, working on a game
for a short period of time,
cramming to get everything in,
seems similar. But game jams
are optional and encourage
participants to create whatever
they want. Participants can
go as slow as they want or
need to.”
“Game jams are meant
to encourage small, quick
creations – projects which
shouldn’t require late nights or
self-destructive work habits,”
adds Reist. “As for crunch in
the triple-A industry – it’s a
deeply rooted issue.”
Another venue for Global Game Jam 2018: Universidad
Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia.
Time Crisis: The creative benefits of game jams
Interface
Paul Nicholas’ 32kB space
sim Low Mem Sky in action.