Team Name: Markos' Little Miracles
Team Members:
Jaime M. Da Cunha - Team Leader, 3D Modeller and Level Design.
Blake Montaque - Animation and 3D Modeller.
Michael Cattermole - Programmer.
Tamás Aczima - Programmer.
Jack HC Ingram - Programmer.
Game Jam Theme: Unreliable
Date: 13-15th July 2018
Download & Play our game HERE.
Gameplay of our game:
Photos of our game:
Brains Eden is the UK's largest international student game jam, now in its tenth year at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK and is fully supported and funded by industry leaders such as ARM, Guerrilla Games Cambridge, PlayStation First, Unity and Jagex. Students come and battle it out by creating a game over the weekend.
Day 1:
Me, Tamas and Jack all met up in Liverpool Street Station and made our way to Cambridge station by train, where we met Michael. We then headed towards Brains Eden, where we would meet Blake who was coming by car. As we arrived at Brains Eden we got the unfortunate news that Blake's car had broken down half an hour away, he didn't make it to the registration to take the group photo but he did make it in time for the start of the Game Jam.
Here is what the schedule of Brains Eden looked like:
After we all met up for lunch we went to the Industry talks, where we met Samuel De Vos who works Ubisoft Massive, he delivered a speech about how many times he got rejected by a ton of companies to then finally make it onto the Division 2 Level Design Team. After that Jonny Watts who is a Chief Creative Officer at Frontier, he talked about his game development path. He revealed that, despite him doing a degree in Zoology he always felt like gaming was his passion and his route, he later on told us that his Zoology degree helped him in the later life, such as the development for Jurassic World.
At 4pm the theme was released, the theme of the Brains Eden 2018 Game Jam was UNRELIABLE, this was possible the vaguest theme I have ever encountered, but we as a team we were ready to absolutely destroy this theme. We were then escorted to Compass House where we would spend our most of our time developing the game.
As we arrived at Compass House we quickly began to discuss ideas. We spent at least 2 hours just brainstorming and discussing ideas. The types of ideas we came up with were all brilliant and really amusing. There were plans of making a wave based game, a battle royale, a networked game and many more, we came with at least 5 different ideas before chose one.
The game idea we chose to develop was a 2 player game where the two people battle it out to score as much points as possible before the timer runs out, you'd have to collect materials (wood, brick and metal) and put them into the machine which had three stages until the final product where you would get the points. The machine would break down randomly and you would need to fix them in order for the machine to move on to the next stage, we also add a weapons machine where players can decide to put the materials instead to collect a weapon to disrupt the other players progress, the weapons included EMP bomb, Bomb and a plunger.
Once we finally agree we created a list of what needed to be done and an asset list. Then, we broke into two teams, Programmers and Artist. Me and Blake worked on the assets, Michael, Jack and Tamas worked on the programming of the game. I worked closely with Jack Ingram as he was programming the machines and since that was the main focus of our game I had to build the level around it. We as whole team made sure to communicate any changes that were needed. Since I was at the Team Leader at the end of each day I made sure to ask what needs to be done and what was achieved today.
Day 2:
We all worked on different scene where we would work on different aspects of the game, I started laying out the level with all my assets and creating a base structure, of which the rest of the team could use to test out their parts. During this day we had a mentor talk where we pitched our game idea and the progress to a few people from the game industry, they gave us a some feedback and improvements that we could have in our game, but I don't think they fully understood the direction we were going towards.
The amount of progress we made on this day was amazing, we had 70% content completed, just things like animations, audio and fixing game breaking bugs and having the actual level done was needed
Here are some of the assets I created:
Day 3:
We all met up at breakfast to discuss what needed to be done, we planned out the last day so we could finish it with zero problems. Most of the day was polishing our own scene before putting them together. During the last few hours we all needed to put together the game, we needed a few more hours to fully polish this game it was 95% complete and if we had just a few more hours I think we'd have a complete bug-free game. As we were building our game a few things didn't seem to work out, but thankful the issues subsided and we were able to complete the Brains Eden Game Jam and submit our work.
Day 4
The day before we celebrated our game and slept in for most the the day and woke up really late, it was well need break from the game jam. At 2:30 all the winners were announced, unfortunately we didn't win.
Summary:
I really enjoyed working with my all team members as they all were proficient in the job that was required of them. We were be able to discuss ideas and opinions, the Game Jam really enabled us to focus on what the core aspect of our game was and leave out features that didn't have a great impact or help our game progress further. This game jam showed how much of an impact each and any every member makes to the finished product. During my time at the Games Jam I learnt how to effectively work as a group and independently. Furthermore, that any changes and or whatever I needed, had to relayed to everyone quickly and efficiently in order for a project to overcome hurdles and hiccups and not stagnate and impact everyone else's work.
Even though we didn't win, the amount of work each member put into this game and the finished product was absolutely amazing. It wasn't the winner in the eyes of the judges but for me, it was a winner.
Photos during the game jam:
