The Goblin Archives (2021)
Details
Gamejam: Global Game Jam NL 2021
Welcome to The Goblin Archives! Here, all items that have found their way outside of the clutches of your Goblin Friends end up, piling ever higher.
It is your task to make your way past nasty papers and mean books and retrieve the lost items scattered through the archive. You can also climb ladders!
Team Size
1 Student Artist, 2 Student Designers,
1 Student Programmers
Playtime
5 minutes
My Contributions
During the gamejam, I…
- Made all the levels
- Did the audio effects and music.
- Learned how to do Unity Lighting for a 2D game.
Reflection
The Goblin Archives was a lot of fun to make because, unlike with the other 2 gamejams I have done so far, we went in with the mentality not to make something cool, but to just have fun amongst ourselves and learn some things while we are at it. It was also the first time working with students outside of my own study, and people I had not worked with before.
I actually picked up some valuable Unity Engine & GitHub skills I didn’t have previously, such as how to do Lighting for a 2D game (without the whole rendering pipeline). It all-together was a nice, worthwile experience, and I got to make some simple levels again.
Catmodeus: Room Groom (2020)
Details
Gamejam: GMTK Game Jam 2020
In Catmodeus, find the worthy objects which are glowing white and push them in the portal to hell to please daddy Satan while occult effects clutter the basement evermore.
Team Size
1 Student Artist, 3 Student Designers,
2 Student Programmers
Playtime
5 minutes
My Contributions
During the gamejam, I…
- Made the Item Spawner.
- Did the audio effects and music.
Reflection
Catmodeus struggled at the start finding a solid core, causing a lot of time to be wasted trying to level design for a game where ultimately, the fun hid in the casual chaos and not the movement. So I am glad I followed my instinct and went back to the drawing board to just make a single simple room, and focus more on the fun of creating/cleaning a mess.
It’s an innocent game with a fun gimmick, that turns into a good time because of the escalated drama of the music and quantity of junk filling up the room. I am very pleased with the result of this chaotic game, even though it originally set out to become something very different.
R.I.Pair (2020)
Details
Gamejam: Global Game Jam 2020
R.I.Pair is a multi-character, single-player maze traversal game in which various body parts of a Zombie try to reassemble and pair up. Overcome different traversal obstacles to eventually re-pair yourself and become whole again.
Team Size
4 Student Artists, 6 Student Designers
Playtime
10 minutes
My Contributions
During the gamejam, I…
- Was responsible for the first two playable levels.
- In absence of the appointed Design Lead, helped with keeping the creative vision.
- Wrote the original Itch Page & Marketing.
- Created an early prototype to test the core game on the first day.
Reflection
As my first Gamejam, it was an amazing and fascinating experience. However, I don’t think I would ever want a team as big as this to work on a small game in a weekend, since it slowed us down during the concepting and prototyping phase to align visions.
Nevertheless, it was an incredibly valuable experience to take with me, and gave me the bug to do more Gamejams in the future.
Boyd Catsman 