I’d like to invite all Border House readers and authors to participate in the community’s first-ever game jam, beginning this Thursday!
What is a game jam?
If you don’t know what a game jam is, basically it is an event where people get together to make a game under very strict time restraints. Most game jams are weekend events where participants spend 48 hours straight just making a game. Since this game jam isn’t a physical meetup, I’m giving you one week. Your goal is to make a game using TWINE, a tool that enables the creation of Choose Your Own Adventure-style games.
Why Twine?
First of all, it is very easy to use. Anna Anthropy recently published a great tutorial for it. You don’t need to know how to program to make a working game using Twine.
Secondly, the output of Twine is a single HTML file, meaning it is very easy to distribute. TBH will be happy to host your game if you’d like, or you can post it in your own space, and we will link to it in the wrap-up post.
So how does this work?
Starting Thursday at midnight (your local time), make a game! Submit your HTML file or a link to your game to editors@borderhouseblog.com by the following Thursday at midnight (your local time) and we will post it on the blog. Then check out the games the rest of the folks in the community made!
How can I possibly make an entire game in a week?
You can totally do it! Trust me.
The spirit of a game jam is just to make games–any kind of game. It doesn’t have to be long, or technologically impressive, or deep, or innovative, or polished. It just has to be yours. Because more personal games should exist for their own sake. For art’s sake.
If this interests you at all, please spread the word. Feel free to ask questions or collaborate with others in the comments here or in the TBH IRC channel. And if anyone has any suggestions for an (optional) theme, please leave a comment. Look for the kick-off post on Thursday!
I’m in!
Yay!!
We just had an 8-hour (on-site) game dev jam and I produced a horrible HTML (but voiced! [even more horrible]) abstract point-and-click adventure game.
I’d love to do a text adventure, but the tools I found so far (inform) were not open and accessible enough.
At our next jam I’ll be sure to try using twine!
Twine is incredibly accessible. You just need to write text and learn some very simple syntax that is similar to HTML. You can have a simple game with a couple rooms up and running in just a few minutes.
I’ll try!
And I’ll be uncreative and suggest “jam” itself as a topic, as it can refer to lots of different things, like an impenetrable crowd, a fun sort of hack, slamming something into something else, a mental block, an unstructured creative output by a group, or a delicious fruity spread.
And “borders” as a topic as well, also for its many interpretations, and in honour of the blog.
And “borders” as a topic as well, also for its many interpretations, and in honour of the blog.
I like this!!
Count me in!
Woooo!
Oh man, I definitely have to do this if I don’t have too much homework.
You can totally do it!!
I’m gonna do my best to parcel out time between assignments.
Hooray!!
I’m so glad so many folks are excited to participate! This will be fun
Haha, I second Borders as a theme because it works with what I’m already thinking about. Woo let’s do this!
Okay, I’ll bite. I’ve been meaning to try out Twine for ages now anyway.
Oh, excellent. It’s Python-friendly AND you can use HTML as you please. Twine already looked user-friendly, but now it’s a breeze.
I’m terrible at game jams, though. I love to start ‘em … never finish ‘em. May or may not participate (I want to so bad, though).
Does it count if I’ve been planning a CYOA sort of thing for my legal site? This looks like it might be suitable for the “When Should You Call KA101?” thing I’d been wanting to do.
As long as you haven’t actually started it yet, sure!
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I wasn’t sure if I would, but I’m defintiely giving this a shot now. I’m going ambitious, so hopefully I’ll be finished in time.
Hooray! Be sure to keep your scope focused though
I’ll certainly try. I’m taking a seat-of-your-pants approach for the first few days, but I’ll focus back in as it winds down. I’ve already got about 4 dozen boxes done in Twine.
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