Global Game Jam Hull

Waiting for the theme….. lots of excited students

The Global Game Jam Hull, took place at Hull College, the event started with a couple of excellent videos which are available at www.globalgamejam.org setting the scene (and reminding everyone about the power of deodorant) and then we got the theme. No pictures, no words. Just the sound of a human heartbeat. Genius.

The hack was, then was underway, teams began to form, some students were already in teams some started to develop teams of designer, artists and developers. As you can see we had a number of professional film crews throughout the event (who turned out to be Grimsby College Media Students studying digial media production) they were using the event to develop portfolios and undertook a number of interviews, etc throughout the event and this content will be available once edited.

I took along six Windows 8 slates which the teams could use to debug their windows 8 apps and a lot of students had Windows Phone devices and we had a selection of prizes for the winners of the event.

We announced the differenators and the academic’s in attendance from each of the events stressed the importance of not wasting this opportunity to begin building a real portfolio of apps.

A total of 20 teams then found suitable location, rooms within the college which was a fantastic location

The results

Judging was a really frenzied effort. We spit into teams of judges, 10 teams per group, each group of judges had a video crew to create videos for use at the final presentation at the end of the day.

Each of the judging teams were chaperoned by a film crew. If you want to take a look at the amazing games here is a video on YouTube here.

These are teams who have excelled in specific competition categories.

“Heart Attack Team” with their Social Media award their app Heart Attack was built for Windows 8 and fully functional and was uploaded to store yesterday I had email today saying the WP8 version will be in store before the end of the week. This was built with XNA and ported using MonoGame

“3 Old Robots and an Englishman” with their Diversifier award they built a game in 48k

“50 Shades of Simon Grey” with their Art award an awesome Unity Game with amazing visuals

“Blimbu” with their Project Management award Awesome game by Grimsby Students built using GameMaker they are in the process of porting this to Windows 8

Lifeline team with their Collaboration Award as students were from Teesside Uni, Grimsby and Hull Uni

Now it was time for the top three teams.

“Across the Border” came third with a lovely heart powered jetpack game. This was a fully functional Windows Phone app and demonstrated on a device and will be available in store.

In second place we had the “Heart Attack” team with a single finger controlled sideways scroller that has the player boosting their heart and avoiding circular saws, boost batteries and slow me down pills.

The winners were “50 Shades of Simon Grey”, who designed, built and then textured an entire haunted mansion for their terrifying game where a ghostly presence stalks multiple players as they search the rooms to try and exorcise the evil that lurks there. The game uses 3D sound to play the hearbeat of the avenging ghost as he comes up behind you for the kill. Great, and very atmospheric, stuff. For this to be produced in 48 hours was amazing and it really shows the power of Unity! Once we have the Unity plug-in available Windows 8 will have some amazing games.

Finally we highlighted the Windows 8 Competition https://www.ubelly.com/global-game-jam/ and simply stressed this was an amazing opportunity of students to get some incentives and most importantly visit MS and meet some of the staff and get feedback on their games.

Overall Superb event and awesome support from the academic’s involved and venue to help this really be a huge success. Additionally made great introduction to the teams at platformexpos.com and introduced them as a BizSpark Network Partner.