Global Game Jam is an event in which people from all over the world (hence: global) attempt to make a game in 48 hours, starting Friday night and continuing into Sunday morning.

I attended Global Game Jam with my best friend, Catsync. This was the first such event for either of us, so she and I had no idea what to expect. We joined the location at Raritan Valley Community College in NJ, which was organized by another friend of ours, Bill Crosbie, a professor at RVCC.

Before I get into the details, let me thank Bill and the dozen-or-so students who volunteered to help run the event at RVCC, as well as the college itself.

Each year, a theme is given out as part of Global Game Jam and your game should be, at least loosely, based on that theme. This year’s theme was:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

You are then given some time to try to come up with an idea for a game. Catsync and I had several ideas, but although she has been a programmer for 20 years (and I have some basic programming skills), we didn’t think we could manage to complete any of our ideas in a weekend.

At the end of the brainstorming period, anyone who has an idea is invited to pitch the idea to the group (of about 70 people).

There were a few interesting ideas, but in the end we decided to join with an artist, Ryan J Smith. Ryan had taken the theme very literally, and had a concept of a game with a protagonist who could take on aspects of the elements he sees around him, such as fire, water, stone, etc. A few other students also joined our group, though they would end up only participating in early discussions of the ideas of the game.

We set out to work on a simple 2d side scrolling game, called URWUC: You Are What You See. We decided to try to use Unity to create the game, since I had some experience with that program from a Game Creation course at Rutgers (which was taught by Bill Crosbie).

We discussed how the game would work and decided on a puzzle format. Your character would encounter obstacles that could be overcome by using your power to take on aspects of the elements you scanned.

We helped Ryan think up a list of art assets we would need to be made for the game, including terrain types (ground, water, ice), obstacles (stones, brambles, glass, grates), the character and his elemental forms (human, fire, water, stone), background art (walls, clouds), projectiles (fireball, iceball), and a few other items.

Ryan began to work on the art, while Catsync and I watched some Unity tutorials. After some tutorials, Catsync and I discussed some of the actions we would need to happen in the game, including movement, the ability to destroy obstacles, the ability to identify an item’s element, the ability to scan the element and then transform the protagonist into that element, and more. She set to work writing scripts for Unity.

There were also some logistical issues. RVCC’s IT department did not want us on the RVCC network, which made sharing files a little more difficult than it should have been. Fortunately, I had thought to bring a USB Drive and we were able to pass work back and forth that way.

When Ryan passed me the first pieces of art, I realized I might have to do some animation as the images were, of course, static. Unfortunately, it had not occurred to us ahead of time, but Ryan’s character drawings were facing out, towards the viewer. This meant that when animating them, they would have to do a sort of side-step. It had already taken him several hours to complete the characters, so I decided to see what I could do. I did ask him to separate the limbs, so I would not have to cut up the images myself.

Unity works very well for quick 2D games. I was able to throw down a few objects in the game, add Ryan’s character art, add Catsync’s scripts, and I had the character wandering around the screen.

Then I started animating. My first attempt looked fairly terrible, so I sought out more tutorials. After a few tutorials and a few more tries, I started to get the hang of it.

Ryan’s art already had a lot of character. The fire version of the main character didn’t just look like he was the same character with some fire glued on, he looked like someone made of fire. The same was true for the other element types. I decided to animate each version of the character in a way to differentiate the elements, trying to imbue some characteristic of each element into the way it was animated.

Now that I had art from Ryan and scripts from Catsync, I was able to begin some real level design.

It was stressful, and at times frustrating. Unity has one bad bug where it just stops acknowledging you’ve made a change. This means you start thinking something is wrong with your scripts or setup and you spend time trying to correct it. Eventually I’d realize there was nothing wrong, save the work, restart Unity, and it would then work correctly. I probably lost about 2-3 hours to this over the weekend.

Catsync and I wanted to try a few additional ideas, like adding a female protagonist in addition to the male one, but Ryan wasn’t interested and didn’t think we had time, even though there was still 18 hours on the clock before the deadline (3pm Sunday).

Many people stayed throughout the weekend, sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor. No thank you. Catsync and I went home to sleep each night around 3 or 4, and returned around 10 that morning.

Catsync and I were very pleased to have a functioning game at the end of the event; it was more than we expected to have. It only had one level, and we did not get a chance to include all the elements, but we had fire, ice, stone, and water represented in the game, plus obstacles that required fire, ice, or stone to pass, as well as a an obstacle that would not let you pass if you were the wrong element (an ice path that would break if you were stone).

While it was stressful, and tiring, I felt like I learned a lot. Not just about Unity, but also about the game design process. It was a lot of fun even with the stress, and I definitely want to try it again, but I might try to field a team ahead of time to have a better chance of getting more done.

If you’re interested in playing the game, you can do so by visiting http://zdh.com/gradin/unity/URWUC/URWUC.html. Let me know if you enjoy it.