#ggj23

https://runicpixels.itch.io/roots-of-skye Our Global Game Jam game is finished! It was a lot of fun with

Tired and happy after finishing my GGJ project with shadowmint! The theme this time was “roots”.

Tree of Strife - as a little sprout, save the life tree from parasitic plants. It's a card battler with plant summons and a branching (heh) encounter system. Art, animation & music: me Coding & design: shadowmint We did the long jam and started after the theme release, so we had a couple of extra evenings to work on this one, instead of the normal 48 hours. =) I even had time to write a little bit of music and do some gameplay polish.

You can play in browser here! Pick a red flower to start and encounter and drag cards onto a creature to play them. Clearing an encounter means you can reach further up the branch. You can do as many encounters as you like to get better cards, and face the boss at the top when you’re ready.

Wait- what is Global Game Jam? Why, its the largest game creation event in the world of course! For 48 hours, thousands of game developers worldwide gather to brainstorm and create videogames together. And for us, we gathered at our local event- the 250+ attendee strong GGJ Hamar, happening at the Inland Campus!

This year was special for multiple reasons. For one thing, this was my first year on the organizer side of things! I was responsible for the graphics and theming of the event, making the logo and event t-shirts. I also helped out with some promoting and shouting people around on the day of itself, as well as a giant cardboard wall the attendees could doodle on with markers.

Secondly, this was the first physical event since 2020! The pandemic really put a lock on the local gamedev events for a while, which is a total bummer given that we have such a rich creative environment here. This meant that we were a bit rusty and out of touch. By the time we started promoting, we realize that there were multiple batches of students that had never even attended a jam before.

But despite snags and scrambling towards deadlines, the event went off smoothly- and if you can believe it, tiny Hamar was in the top 10 largest jam sites worldwide!

The games were great too- i keep being surprised by the sheer level of creative output during these events. Bugs and glitches are no match for these visions. I’d like to think our attendees also had a good time, and were encouraged to attend next year as well. If you were one of the attendees that weekend: come back, y’hear! It was fun!

But what did we make? Well, we didn't collab- i personally feel like its a bit of a shame to have such a wonderful social event and then move to work with the people you always work with anyway. Game jams give us a bit of an excuse to spread our wings/fling spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks.

On my end i settled in with a group of first timers to make ROOTLESS YOUTH

Rootless youth is a game where you reconnect subcultures with their lost lingo, clicking and dragging clipart into sentences to complete their sentences. You can try the game here!

This was pretty fun- it essentially turned into 90s windbreaker themed duolingo. The team did great, and were absolute troopers trying to finish this despite a lack of jamming experience and less than ideal software! We had a lot of laughs figuring out and depicting various subcultures. On my end i was the lead designer, did the logo and UI, as well as the music.

Åge made LEECHER

Leecher was described to me as basically gridless Snake. You worm around and eat particles, making your roots a little longer every time you do. This was a solo project, and can be played here!

In short- a lot of pizza was eaten and a lot of coffee was inhaled this last weekend. I was knocked out for almost the entirety of Monday even with following my regular sleep pattern! Jamming knocks you out a bit, its no secret- but still, i can hardly wait for next year.

If you’re a Hamar local, consider popping by! Hopefully i’ll get to design you a cool t-shirt. For now, its back to the regular grind- we’re steadily getting busier at the office now. It feels like we got very popular very suddenly! (especially now that the fishing game isn’t the only project on the table anymore)

My brother and I finished our 8th Global Game Jam project together over the weekend! This was definitely a crazy GGJ and different than usual. We did a little bit of both but I mostly focused on the programming, game design, and writing on the game while he worked on most of the art and UI.

Tag World Roots is a game where you play as a bird who raises children to level up skills, socialize, and ultimately compete in a tournament. 

🎮 Here's the link to play the game!

Here’s a video playthrough of my Global Game Jam project, Tag World Roots!