After the success in Chennai and Hyderabad respectively, it was time for GameJam Titans to take the proceedings ahead in the city of Bengaluru.
The theme that was given to the school kids was to create a game using any platform or software around either ‘gravity’ or ‘minimal’, whereas the theme for the college/professional participants was a toss between ‘childhood’ or ‘death’. The school kids were given a day’s tutorial on using Unity by the team at Mindbox, a week prior to the showcase date.
The student category saw 12 teams coming in comprising of nearly 60 kids, with the youngest participants being mere sixth graders and the oldest in class eleven. The jury for Bengaluru comprised of all three members of the Chennai panel – Joel M Johnson, founder of digikhel; Gregg Barnett, creative director at Dhruva Interactive and Anand Ramachandran, game designer at Tiny Mogul Games.
One of the jury members, Joel said: “I had the pleasure of witnessing and playing the first games created at this event in Chennai, and I believe Hyderabad had some better rounded games; but now that GameJam Titans is in my hometown I am hoping to see some great games coming out of here and the themes for Bengaluru are pretty interesting, so let the jamming begin.”
With the choice being between ‘gravity’ and ‘minimal’, the kids created some really interesting games and some just blew away the minds of the jury keeping in mind that most of these games were created in just over five or six days.
“Some of these games seem to have had a lot of thought going behind it, and they look like finished products. This event is really creating a revolution of sorts, where we have young kids coming and showcasing their presentation skills, apart from showing how good they are in creating games,” expounded Gregg.
The jury went across to each of the 12 participating teams and played & tested the games over the next four hours, before finally coming to the conclusion that there would be a mention of the top five teams in the school category, among which the runners-up and the winner will receive cash vouchers worth Rs 2,000 from flipkart, medals and a small silver and gold trophy respectively.
The winner was a game based on the theme of gravity using softwares like Unity and Photoshop within five days.
On winning in the school category, the team members jointly said: “We really would like to thank the organisers for coming to our city and giving us an opportunity to not just participate in this contest, but also be trained in using the Unity software and create a game that we believed in. We can’t wait to come to Pune in November for the NASSCOM game developers conference.”
It was now the turn of the college/professionals from the city to showcase their games to the judges. There were only 6 teams in all, which included 1 professional teams from Cognizant; the theme given to this category was a choice between ‘childhood’ or ‘death’, and most of the teams attempted to incorporate both these elements in their games.
The jury begun to go around the teams to decide the runners-up and the winner for this category; “Since these guys are a little more trained and are pursuing a career in gaming, they should be better equipped in using the various softwares and create a product that can be a standalone commodity for the marketplace. I have high expectations from this category and hope they do too,” smiled Gregg.
The jury was reasonably surprised with the result, and the thought that went behind each game. Most of the games used both the themes in their gameplay and tried using different mechanics for their games.
On winning the GameJam Titans’ college category in Bengaluru the team exulted: “We are elated and ecstatic, we can’t believe we won. We put in a lot of hardwork and were much focused that we had to complete the game in the stipulated time. We would like to thank the organisers for this great initiative and would certainly like to come once again to GameJam Titans Two, and will look forward for Pune now.”
Chapter three of GameJam Titans came to an end in Bengaluru, though the turnout was a little disappointing for the IT Mecca of the country, the proceedings now travel to the ‘Oxford of the East’; the city of Pune, but that is a different story for a different day! Watch this space to catch all the news and updates on GameJam Titans.