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Community Corner

Game Jam Spawns Leapin' Lizards and Birds in Space

The Universities at Shady Grove hosts 48 hours of video game creation and competition.

The mission that teams competing in the Global Game Jam last weekend at Universities at Shady Grove chose to accept: Create a video game from scratch—and do it in two days.

Rockville was just one of hundreds of jam sites around the world. The annual competition challenges thousands of game designers to bring video or non-digital games from concept to realization within the compressed timeframe.

The weekend kicked off Friday afternoon with a bit of inspiration: An address by Bruce Nesmith, lead designer of Bethesda Softworks' award-winning "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim." Nesmith spoke about what goes into creating an open-world, free-roaming, adventure/fantasy role-playing game: Tens of millions of dollars, a team of about 100 people and three years of work.

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A proof of concept is not enough for games as complex as "Skyrim," Nesmith said. Instead, a vertical slice is taken—one city and one dungeon at a time—and the game is played to see if every single element responds as intended.

The rules state that the teams can decide upon the software they'll use to create their game but nothing else. To ensure those rules are met, the theme isn't announced until 6 p.m. on Friday evening. This year's theme was Ouroborus, which signifies the cyclical renewal of life. Game creators consider the theme in their design and game play.

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For the team that designed "Go Lizard Go," the idea was to create a quick game that the player could continually get better at through play. The lizard, being attacked by bees after stealing their honey, would die when it fell off the moving platforms. It would spend one minute in the death world before returning to the platforms. Team members Drew Lund (music/programming), Todd Lees (sound/programming), Walter Lucman (programming), Jen Lees (art), Mic Couture (programming) and Michael VanDaniker (programming) work together at the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park.

The Adept Theory team from Sherwood High School set out to create a game for the Windows Phone. Each team member received a free phone. The team also received an $800 gift card. The programmers on the team were Shann Verna and Chris Krauss. Music and sound was the job for Timothy Spillman with art by Jay Boswell.

There wasn't much time to worry about the user experience. Getting the sound, art and programming to work as planned kept the various teams working around the clock. By Sunday evening they were ready to present their finished products and learn the results.

"StarSling" by Space Team! took top honors, despite not including music or sound in their game. The game, which its creators described to The Gazette as “kind of like Angry Birds in space,” was created by Will Gallagher (art), Zach Urtes (art), David Noona (programming) and Sam Batista (programming).

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