Saturday Game Jam Thread (July 01 2023)
Hey y’all, welcome back to the second weekly game jam thread.
Whats a game jam you may ask. Well imagine if you locked a group of game developers in a box for box for some quantity of time ranging from a few days to a few weeks and told them to compete with each other by building something around a theme and then judging whatever each other came up with, that's a game jam.
Now you may ask why would anyone play these things besides the other game game jam entrants. I don’t know about everyone else but despite being one of the younger users on this site I can’t help but feel like I have to work very hard to find any sort of magic in my life and I keep telling myself if I just keep playing more games and scraping and scrounging at the fringes of the industry I can find the magic again and be happy for a little bit.
Its actually a little scary sharing these games with you guys. I know its unreasonable to get emotionally invested in tiny games I did not even make but it does make me happy that people are taking an interest in this thread. Here is what I have for you this week.
HeartBeat
Platforms: Windows, HTML5
Genres: Rhythm
Do you remember that one part in that one game that you like, during the final boss fight when the heroes theme is reprised and layers are added to the song for each stage of the boss fight and then the vocals kick in and its awesome. Here in game jam land our motto is “All killer no filler”, we like to skip to the good part and this entry from Boss Rush Jam 2023 fits the bill. Its the final boss battle of a rhythm game and features an unusual control scheme that takes a few tries to get the hang of. Let me know if this game jogs any memories of boss fights.
e-scape
Platforms: Windows
Genres: Simulation
If you talk to a gamer that has been around for awhile they will have a story to tell you about a game that they used to play that has since been shutdown. Its always the same story. They see an article out of the blue that the game they used to play just announced a shutdown date. They log in and like a traveler from an antique land, are greeted by a ghost town filled with statues of champions and kings soon to be buried forever at the command of a datacenter sysadmin.
That is e-scape, look on its works, ye mighty, and despair!
This week was both nostalgic and somber for me and that leaked into this weeks selection in a big way. I really do look forward to seeing peoples responses to this thread though and I hope to keep doing these threads for the foreseeable future.
Both of those games are cool.
So is this post a game jam? I might be dumb but I didn’t see a theme. I would totally be down to jam if anyone else is interested. I use Godot 4 at the moment.
EDIT: I see now that you are reviewing game jam games, but I stand by my comment!
I have never done a game jam myself. I did take a game development elective in college once which is kind of similar. I work really long hours at my current job so I don't think I can participate sadly. There is a reason I play short game jam games.
I guess my title could be clarified a bit. I should rename the thread title for this week and the previous week to be Saturday Game Jam Review Thread. Though I think someone more senior has to do that for me.
I would participate in weekly or monthly game jams myself as well. The server could very well serve both purposes if we have enough interest here.