Iowa Indie Game Jam #3 success

The third Iowa Indie Game Jam was a great success!  It was held this weekend October 17-19 in Cedar Falls at the apartment of Andres Reinot, an 8monkey Labs co-founder.  He hosted an artist from Phantom EFX, several hobbyists and ISU students from Ames, four members of our company Intuition Games, and some friends and co-workers who stopped by just to wish us well or participate for a brief period here and there.  Unfortunately, there was no internet access at the apartment, so this is a recap (it could probably be seen as a blessing in disguise :P).

This time there was a specific theme, which was “2d vs 3d.”  The goal was to decide on a concept and make interpretations of the concept in both 2d and 3d.  Most of us showed up on Friday night, socialized for a bit, got a sneak peek of the graphically-impressive Darkest of Days, and started brainstorming.  The concept we came up with was exploring what it’s like to fly and be sensitive to wind patterns through the mechanics of grasshopper flight.  You’re a grasshopper, and you can jump, fly/glide for a brief period, free fall, or dive bomb.  You travel throughout a world and must deal with changing wind patterns in different areas of the sky.  Joe made a really fun joke about how the player could be searching for a female grasshopper, and when he found her, he’d say “nice legs.”  It went over well enough that everyone agreed the project would be named Nice Legs.  That’s our Joe!

Brainstorming on an HDTV was nice. :)

The 3d team - composed of Andres from 8monkey Labs, Paul from Phantom EFX, and Ken from ISU - were going to use 8monkey’s Marmoset Engine and its tools as a foundation from which to build the game.  The 2d team - composed of Joe, Mike, Greg and myself (Josh) from Intuition - were going to use Box2D, Joe’s partially-developed tile engine, and Flash as a foundation.  Kira from ISU was going to illustrate a grasshopper, which could be used by both teams if need be.

The 3d team presided in the living room to the right.  The 2d team was in the kitchen at left.  Pictured at center holding the laptop is Mike Holtan.  He joined us for a large part of the game jam working on his own version of the concept, which was a one-on-one grasshopper jousting game using physics based on actual grasshopper anatomy (think Toribash with grasshoppers and jousting).  He was using the game to teach himself Box2D and Flash.

We split up into our teams and got to work.  It was fascinating to see how each team went in their own direction.  The 3d team, headed by Andres, went in a more flight simulator route by focusing on realistic flight physics and tuning the controls to an Xbox 360 gamepad.  The 2d team went in a more platformer route by getting the tile engine up and running, and focusing on creating sections of the sky that acted as wind patterns.

Here’s Mike, who’s birthday was Oct. 6, enjoying some belated birthday cake.  Thanks to my wife for making me enough cake that I’d have leftovers to share with Mike. :)

The end result of our game jam was two sandboxes in which we could explore the mechanics of our game, and both seemed to provide some good promise that a fun game could be made out of them.  Neither team was able to complete a finished game, but everyone seemed pretty inspired to keep working on the projects after the weekend was over.  Thanks to Andres for hosting us!

In the next post, I’ll upload some screenshots of the 2d and 3d version of Nice Legs and go into more detail about each one.  In the meantime, feel free to head to the iowa indie game jam photo page to see the other photos.