We made it!
Last weekend, We hosted our biannual UA Game Jam. Around 50 students came together to produce 11 games! If you were apart of this crazy event, congratulations! You're officially a game developer.
Not many can say they've created a video game, and in 2 days no less! We had so many great games produced this semester, let's take a look at each of the submissions!
The theme of this jam was:
Bear Minimum.
Ball N' Chain
By: Jason, David, and Ben
This creative puzzle platformer puts you in the boots of a curse pirate ghost, forever bound to the cannon ball that dragged him to his watery grave.
But this symbol of his demise has now become your greatest tool in escaping your new prison: ...a Pirate Museum?
Ball N' Chain tasks players with navigating a 3D environment by throwing around a cannon ball attached to their leg. Players must use the momentum of the cannonball to catapult themselves through windows, over ledges, and onto ships!
A great game from a talented team. Good job to everyone who worked on this!
CheeseBearger
By: Jonah Venglarick, Paul Rogers, Peter Bedrick, and Jade Marmorstein
This text-based game is a tribute to ASCII RPGs from the days of gaming's past. CheeseBearger sets players on a quest to find the mighty... the elusive... the medium rare.... Cheeseburger?
There's a lot of depth to this game, with a leveling system, map, and NPCs, giving the player the ability to tell their own story.
Did I mention this game was made entirely in Python? Great job everyone!
Backseat Gamer
By: Riley Driscoll, Emily Jonatan, Eric Wise, Alex Denby, and Kiana Kremer
It's a cool summer night. Your best friend, John, is relaxing on the sofa with some good-old-fashioned video game action. And by "
Relaxing" I mean,
"is currently on the verge of punching a hole in the wall over his own ineptitude at all things digital and interactive."
Are you going to just sit there and watch him lose... again and again
and again?
Can you help lead John to victory without ever picking up a controller?
Can you truly become...
The Backseat Gamer?
This amazing entry throws the player into a difficult balancing act; give your friend too much help, and he will become frustrated, but give too little help, and he will get even MORE frustrated!
As someone who has been in MANY situations like this, I found this game to hit a little too close to home.
Truly excellent work from everyone on the team, especially the artists!
Minimum Rage
By: Logan Benner, Ben Bergen, William Rockwell, Macgregor Montavon, and Ranjan Uprety
Look, who doesn't love Pizza? Well, I love
eating pizza. Delivering it is a different story.
Minimum rage is an arcade-y action game that has players dodging a variety obstacles down a straight road, shooting pizzas at hungry houses as they go. How many pizzas can you deliver? My record is 598129087098572346509786.
Great job to everyone who worked on this! I love the character art! :)
Underachieve-Bear
By: Nick Kalkanian, Matt Comstock, and Lauryn James
Underachieve-Bear is a cute engineering game about constructing simple contraptions to transport a falling honey-hive to a (very lazy) bear. don't let the honey hit the ground, lest it break open and release the fury of 1000 angry bees! LOOK OUT THEY'RE GOING TO STING YOU AHH
What's that? They've removed the bees? Oh thank god.
I really enjoyed this entry. It's a nice change of pace from the run-of-the-mill "game jam puzzle game".
Great work everyone!
Yngvar The Mad Bear God
By: Cameron Larson
Yngvar (pronounced Yngvar) is a top-down shooter where quick reflexes are key. You play as a small ninja who can throw shurikens, and teleport a short distance- wait, what's that? Oh crap!
*teleports 10 lines down the page*
Phew, that was close! Sorry, just had to get out of the way of Yngvar! The Mad Bear God! overcome this challenging boss to win the game!
A very impressive game, especially considering it was programmed by one person! Great work, Cameron! :)
Spookem
By: Amir, Ethan, and Moises
Day 30: I'm still stuck on the second key. Maybe today will be different...
Spookem is an Extremely hard top-down exploration game about finding a number of keys hidden in a dark maze. Watch out for the ghosts that haunt these caverns! A single touch will send you...
Day 31: All the way back to the start. again. I knew today wouldn't be any different. I don't know what I was thinking. Hope? I don't know what hope is anymore....
Frustrations aside, Great job to the team!
The Price of Freedom
By: Chris Klimowski, Chris Wheeler, and Joseph Scheidemandel
The year is 20XX.
The Deep State has installed Hillary Clinton as POTUS for life.
Medicare, College, and Amazon Prime 2-day shipping are now free for all Americans.
But how will they pay for it?
By god. They've slashed the Military Budget!
In this biting political commentary/top-down competitive action shooter, 2 players face off to see who's super-soldier program is the most effective in this new era of American socialism.
this Jenga-inspired game tasks players with removing equipment and armor from their shared character, to see who can complete an obstacle course brimming with killer robots with as little upgrades as possible.
Can you beat the course without a mine-detecting radar? Without dodge rolling? Without a gun?!?
This was my team's game! I had a ton of fun making the art and music. I hope you enjoy it!
BEARly Making it
By: Christi, Isabel, Tim, Ryan, Nick, and Leo
This wacky slice-of-life work simulator is a charming look into the struggles of modern office life. Bears weren't meant to work 8 hours a day in a cubical!
Keep productivity up by drinking coffee, and making copies, but don't get too stressed out! Blow off some steam and browse the internet, but if your boss catches you... Well... let's just not think about that. More cat videos! Yay!
It would seem Bears just wanna have fun. Who knew?
I love the adorable art in this game. Great job everyone who was on this team!
SLAP DASH
By: Caleb, Victor, Mia
Seriously, this game is pure fun. Very similar to Warioware, SLAPDASH is a collection of fast-paced mini-games that are thrown at you one after the other.
You'll be matching pairs of cards in a memory game, before being told to "collect the coins!" and frantically dashing around the screen, before being thrown into a game of red-light, green-light.
The production value of this game is seriously something, my only real complaint is that there are only around 5 games, but this is a game jam after all!
Seriously, great work you 3!
AWARDS:
Best Art: BEARly Making it
Best Writing: CheeseBearger
Best Sound/Music: Backseat Gamer
Most Ambitious: Destructural Engineering
-Popular Vote-
3rd Place: Underachieve-Bear
2nd Place: The Price of Freedom
1st Place: Backseat Gamer
Thanks so much to everyone who participated! Special thanks to our game jam planners this semester:
Jessica and Stephanie!
We hope to see you again next year! Keep making great games!
