Game Jam Reflective Report

 When I first heard about Game Jam at the start of the semester I wasn't too interested in applying to participate because my coding skills and game development skills aren't too strong. But as it got closer to the time of game jam I decided to just apply anyway because it's something I've never done before and it was a chance to meet some new people from other campuses and also to try and strengthen my game design skills over the weekend event. As a whole I really enjoyed the whole weekend and I was really happy with my team, we worked very strongly together and each of us had something different to bring to the team throughout the process. 

I think the format of Game Jam was really good, I liked that we were put with people we knew but also people we didn't know, so it wasn't as nerve wrecking having someone you know within the team opposed to being with all strangers. I also liked that it was a 3 day thing and not something stretched over throughout the semester because then we weren't taking a lot of time to plan and design because we knew we only had a set amount of time to do the work. I also liked that it was a language game because as well as developing my game design skills, we were also learning some things from the language students and the languages they are studying.

I was in Team Grasshopper(the best team). My team consisted of two CDM students and also two language students who were studying French. We joined in to the teams chat after the introduction to game jam and talked about our availability as we all had work at some point during the weekend, we then discussed what kind of game we wanted to make and also what platform we would use. Krzysztof suggested Renpy since he had used it before and after choosing out platform we allocated tasks for each of us, I was to design the characters and backgrounds, Krzysztof said he would code the game on Renpy and the two French students would translate any dialogue we had for the game. After that we discussed a time to meet the next day and got on with our work. 

By the second day we had a good solid base for our game, most of the dialogue had been translated, I had most of the backgrounds done and Krzysztof had most of the game coded. We were all really happy with the work we had completed by the second day and were pretty confident with our game after that point. We had all had a conversation on the first day about how we were nervous that we wouldn't be able to get a game completed in 3 days but after seeing our progress on the second day all of that nervousness went away. We all were just set the task to finish off all of the little bits we had left to do and then said we would meet again the next day to see the final game and polish off some of the little bits and see what the game is like when it is fully functional. 

Above is our miro board that we created at the start of the game jam to note down all of our ideas and storylines that we had for the game, as well as our team name and logo. We all really enjoyed the planning process for the game, we all had so many story idea's for the game and we were so excited to just get started and to see all of our ideas come to life. 

My role in Game Jam was to create and find some backgrounds and characters for the game, this was quite an easy task for me as I just had to find some copyright free cartoon pictures of France and French things and just edit in some things to them and then send them on to Krzysztof so he could add them into the game. I think out of all of us Krzysztof maybe had the hardest part of coding the game, but he said he enjoys coding and was happy to code the game while me and the language students did everything else.

After we submitted our game, we all reflected on what the experience was like for all of us and all came to the conclusion that we really enjoyed all the aspects of the Game Jam. I really enjoyed being able to talk to new people and get to know them over the course over the 3 days, I also really enjoyed getting to know one of my classmates better, who I usually wouldn't have spoken to regularly, I enjoyed learning a bit about French culture too from the language students and I really enjoyed seeing how interested they were in the whole process of game design, they were always asking questions and wanted to know more about game design. It's nice to see that they were able to learn new things during the course of the weekend just like we were.

Overall I had a great time doing Game Jam, I got to meet new people, I got to create a game with my group that we were really proud of, I also got to develop some new skills and learn about different platforms where you can create games, beforehand I only knew about Unity, and I really enjoyed that it was a lot of fun, I was expecting to dread doing Game Jam but I had a really positive experience the whole weekend.

If I had the chance to do it again I think I would enjoy it just as much as I did the first time round and I'm really glad that in the end I decided to take the leap and do it because I wouldn't have met all these different people or learn any of the new skills I did during the process.