Griddle Jam was a success!

Today I hosted a game jam and it was fantastic and went a lot smoother than I thought it would.

For those who don’t know, a game jam is an event in which attendees are given an extremely short time constraint to make a game (anywhere from 2-48 hours generally).

This one was a 4-hour jam, which is a stupidly short amount of time to make a game in. Every game made had to incorporate the theme of George Washington into it somehow (This theme was picked randomly out of a hat). We had a wide variety of games, each awesome in their own right. Once/if they all get posted up online I’ll be sure to link to all of them.

My game was a 2-player combat game where you played either George Washington or a British Soldier and had to punch the other player off the screen. Also, you were floating around, spinning in space. I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m currently tweaking it and adding sound effects, particle effects and some other design bits that I’m sure people will enjoy.

Cale Bradbury, Mat Hijazi and Julien Legault teamed up to make a game which I titled “George Washington and Friends.” They drew super cute chibi versions of themselves and George Washington and had a two-player game where you had to throw yourself onto spikes, killing yourself more than your opponent, before the timer hits 0. It showed a lot of promise, and I can’t wait to see what they do with it. Also, it had a pretty nifty character select screen.

Kelvin Put made a shooter where you played as George Washington riding on a flying crystal horse, dropping anvils onto British children and presents onto American children. It was ridiculous and awesome, especially since I only just taught Kelvin how to make games last week.

Jason Kaplan made a faux art game that gave us all a chuckle. It’s best not to explain this one.

Levo DeLellis made a text adventure (which I totally was not expecting to see) where you were dragged by an ogre and thrown into a cage and had to find your way out. This had nothing to do with George Washington, except for the fact that you could imagine that that you were George Washington, which actually made the whole thing more ridiculous and awesome.

Daniel Steger made two games. One of them was a button-mashing cherry tree chopping competition. The other had you in the role of George Washington, pushing both British and American troops around in the most advantageous positions. I saw a lot of promise with both and hope that he at least tries to do something with them.

Thanks to everybody for coming out and look forward to the next one happening sometime in May!