The past three days I have been jamming at MIT for the global game jam. In a friendly environment of participation, diversity, collaboration, and creativity, more than 80 people working in teams created more than 20 original games. With the only limitation being the theme of “ritual,” the great diversity of games reveals the possibilities of the game medium for experimentation, play, and storytelling. Teams made games about sacrifices to gods, routine office work, shamanism, worms, waking up, and gardening, to name just a few. Our team, composed of Naoumi, JT, Lorenzo, and me, made a game about the ritual of the tea-time, and more specifically, about the mad tea party ceremony that takes place in Alice in Wonderland.
We finished a working prototype on time for the presentations on the third day of the jam, but will continue iterating on the game. We were running late! And even survived a water-flood accident that sent one of our computers to the emergency room. So we couldn’t implement all the features of the game by the end of the jam. However, we learned a lot in the process. Starting with the importance of having a back-up of all the code on the cloud. We were very good in sharing all the assets online except for the code, and that definitely became a problem after the accident. We also were very efficient at the moment of creating all the mechanics, characters, and levels for the game. Being a game that emphasizes logic, we made puzzles for each level and played them on paper. One of my favorite parts of this game was the possibility of using the text of Lewis Carrol for inspiration and remix. This text is curious and cuiouser source of creativity and play. Below are some snapshots that capture our game making process.
Level Design
Paper prototyping
Pixel art assets
Coding
UI design on paper
On screen
