First of, allow me to apologize for previous post. I was in a rouse created by a combination of alcohol, lack of sleep, and extreme happiness.

So, on wards! Two days have passed since the Jam, and it’s time to look back at this incredible weekend: More than 300 participants from all over the world gathered at ITU, each with different goals for the busy days ahead. Whether they came to meet new friends, rediscover old ones, create something, testing ones limits, learning, create a name for themselves or just to have fun doesn’t matter. What really connected these people was a passion for games in all shapes and variations. Now I am aware that I have been numbering the days wrong, but to me the Jam started already one day early: The pre-party! The party was arranged so that the participants could meet each other at a more relaxed setting than the jam. The Copenhagen Game Collective had set up some of their projects for the people to try out, and special game related drinks where available for the occasion. (If you are still looking for the recipes, you can find them (and more) at the Scrollbar homepage.

The following day, Friday, was a day filled with many interesting talks from a huge variety of people and companies. Lego was here, Manveer Heir from Bioware and Damien Morello from Recoil Games was here, just to mention some. The talks where split into two sessions that ran simultaneously: The Main track and the Indie track. There where people arriving throughout the entire day and when we gathered everyone in one auditorium there simply was not enough room. People where standing around the edges and sitting on the stairs eagerly awaiting the opening speech by none other than the Danish Minister of Culture, Uffe Elbæk. Following the Minister was Manveer Heir from Bioware, who held the keynotes for the Nordic Game Jam. Following that was the Global Game Jam keynotes and the theme for this years competition: The Ouroboros. Then the groups where formed, and the Jamming began!

Saturday was Jammerday! I did not have as much time to walk around and look at projects as I had hoped to since I spent most of my time working on our. It was some time during this day we realized we actually had something worthwhile, and that led directly to us not getting nearly as much sleep this night as the previous. Still, it was a great experience to see the game as it took shape.

Most of us where ready to fall asleep after the award ceremony, but it seems like some still have the energy to party!

Sunday was the day of the finals. A lot of stress of getting everything done in time, and then submitting it correctly. We realized, about half an hour before hand in, that we needed a video, a screenshot and a picture of the team. The last picture was the first to get done, as we all just gathered behind the now busies member of our team. It took about 1.8 second after the photographer said “smile” till she was back to work. Screenshot was easy, as we just laid out a “game in process” and took a picture of it. The video, however, turned out to be a problem. First thing we did was to stop7restart shooting after every subject to reduce the need for editing. That was actually a good idea, until we transferred the files to the computer, and opened them in Windows Movie Maker. I know there are split opinions about WMM, but for situations like this its fast and easy. Or so we thought. Turns out that we filmed in HD, and that WMM automatically converts AVI to WMA. And even with just a few minutes of video, this takes a long time. Well, try again! This time we just ignored potential mistakes, and filmed it all at once. We did not have time to watch it, and it went straight to YouTube. Phew…

The award ceremony. I have to admit that I remember very little from this. Still, with the help of friends and pictures, I’ve managed to compose a list of the winners. Remember folks, you read it here first! (I was planning on “borrowing” the list from the NGJ site, but they haven’t uploaded it yet)

Finalists: 9 finalists where voted onto the list by other participants, while the final 3 where hand-picked by the Jury.
Infinite Swat – Infinite SWAG (Youtube link)
Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
Switch Naga Go! – Adorable Nagablob (Youtube link)
Boing Wauw (Youtube link)
Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)
Eskil’s Adventure – [Placeholder] Studios (Youtube link)
AAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!! – Tim (Youtube link)
Spläsh Dämäge - Team Mothership  (Youtube link)
Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
Mein Panzer – Robocat (Youtube link)
Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)

Jury’s Choice Awards:
Prize: Diplomas and a stack of beer-tickets for the after party
Jeppe Carlsen from Playdead: Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
David McCarthy from GREE: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
Manveer Heir from Bioware: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
Ole Teglbjærg from Press Play: Boing Wow (I was unable to find the links for this game)

Winner of the Nordic Food Game Competition:
Prize: 10.000 DKK and a trip to the Nordic Food Conference in San Fransisco
jumping Suzy (YouTube link)

Board game competition winners:
Prizes: Stack of board games. Winners received a gift certificate (5000 DKK) for making a professional prototype of their game.
1st: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
2nd: Blue Print – Hexagonians (Youtube link)
3rd: Ring the Gong – The Brotherhood (Youtube link)
4th: Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Winners of the Nordic Game Jam 2012
Prizes: T-shirts, diplomas and beer tickets for the after party. 1st place got a trophy.
1st: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
2nd: Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
3rd: Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

If you have any of the information I’m missing, please do share. Also, I would love to post your pictures here, should you have any you want to share. (I want to thank Rositsa, Katerina, Tim, Dajana and Deen for helping me with the information/links.)

So, thank you everyone for a fantastic weekend! Hope to see all of you next year. We, Sugarush, will soon start planning our next move towards releasing the game, and I will keep you updated!

Disclaimer: This post may be slightly self centered.

I haven’t been able to write anything about today yet since, let’s face it, I’ve been busy. (And with good reason, as you’ll see later in the post). I was originally set on going home at a reasonable time last night, but time ran a little faster than I expected. I was working on a background story and rules booklet for Mussades (Our game).

We where required to submit a "screenshot" of our game

Allow me to properly introduce our game: This is Mussades! Mussades is an Arabic themed, fast paced board racing game. Here, you take the role as a bandit trying to escape from a failed attempt of robbing a palace. With guards storming towards you from all sides, you have to find your way out of the palace as fast as you can!  It’s a race for survival, and you don’t have to be faster than the guards, as long as you are faster than than your fellow bandits. While trying to escape, you navigate trough the palace by using action cards. These cards either affects you in a positive way, or your companions in a negative way.

The Nordic Game Jam had a little more than 60 different project in the end. To speed up the presentation process the projects where divided into 4 groups, and presented simultaneously in different auditoriums. 3 finalists, 2 chosen by the participants and 1 chosen by a jury member, from each group went on to the finals. Our team, Sugarush, where quite surprised to find our name on that list. We had settled on the fact that our presentation went badly, and that we where out of this part of the competition. The fact that we continued to win not only one, but two, awards was even more surprising. We where the winners of the Best Board Game Award, and a Jury’s Choice Award. The prize for the prior is technically a professionally made prototype of our game + a pile of board games. The prize for the latter award was 20 vouchers for free beer! I still don’t think I have quite grasped the fact that this happened.

The complete Sugarush crew. Picture taken after the award ceremony.

Of course, there where plenty of awards to hand out. And even if the voting system for the peoples choice award broke down, I still think we had a nice voting process. The only thing I would change if I could is that I would have made the votes hidden. Since the votes where cast as lego-pieces in see-trough plastic boxes, it was easy to see what others had voted.

I did not get to see as much of the following after party as I had hoped, since I was busy realizing what we just had accomplished. Not only did we win a chance to make our game a reality, but we where approached by people interested in helping! Still, I got to try that Yoshi-drink I wanted to try, but I have to admit: the Waltz on the Moon drink was better.

I will present a full list of the winners of all the different awards and a proper introduction of the team as soon as I get some well earned rest!

The old and the new player pieces side by side.

It’s well past midnight, and most jammers are taking a well earned break from jamming while enjoying some late-night snack. Sugarush (my team) are taking a small break, after finally beginning to get things together. We did run into some issues throughout the day where we broke the game, fixed it, broke it again, adding rules to cover up broken stuff and so on. Finally, we tore down the game, and left only the core mechanics in place. From there we started anew. Some of the basics of the game have drastically changed during the last few hours, and we have solved many problems. (Including ones we didn’t know we had)

Play testing!

Trying to think outside of the group is proving to be a challenge, as it always is when you grow close to a project. Luckily we are participating in a Jam where both organizers and other teams are eager to help! We have had multiple play test sessions, constantly getting great feedback from people that are genuinely interested in the project.

People, possibly driven mad by to much jamming, eating onion soup.

There are now only 13 hours to hand in, and it seems many groups intent to stay most of the night. This obviously does not go for everyone, as the line for dinner was much longer than the line for the late-night snack. Honestly, I’m not impressed with the snack. Although I do understand the reason for a more healthy meal than what “snack” usually refers to, I still don’t understand how people in their right mind are able to eat onion soup.

Photos by Simon Cutajar (www.scutajar.com)

Third day of the Jam, second day of Jamming! Some people are more rested than others, but the energy level of the participants seems to be unnaturally high. I like to think it’s because of their projects, but I suppose the sugar, the free coffee, and the people running around selling sodas and energy drinks are partly to blame. Still, it’s fun to see some of the different ideas gaining shape. I’m sitting here with Jeppe, who is a first time participant from Denmark. He decided to go solo with a one man team, and with the available resources here at the Jam it’s not that much of an impossible goal. We have a plethora of workshops around ready to help with sound, graphics, logos and so on. He tells me how he have outsourced parts of the project, like the sound and some of the graphics, to the workshops, allowing him to focus on what he does best: Programming. You see, Jeppe is making a space game for the iPhone, created around the quote “To infinity, and beyond” from the movie Toy Story.

Other groups are again quite large. My team, for example, got so large in the end, that we decided to split into two smaller teams. This is an interesting thing to do, because we both participated in the same brainstorming. We also started with the same goal in mind: A board game based around hexagons. Still, the projects are going in completely different directions.

Lunch is upon us, and people are relaxing while waiting for the line to get shorter. Some are releasing their energy trough Street Fighter, while others prefer the “relaxing” feel of Katamari Forever.

So what is our game about? Well, it’s a game focused on building the board as you go along, while removing older parts. Thereby making it a game that could potentially go on forever. We have decided to give the game an “Arabic” feel. (Think Aladdin and Prince of Persia.) I look forward to seeing our artists at work, bringing life into our cold prototype.

Now I see the line shortening, and I think it’s time for me to get some lunch.

All pictures in this post was taken by Kristín Guðmundsdóttir.

As the first day (second if you count the pre-party) draws to an end, many teams are packing up and calling it a night. We are also finishing up for the evening, getting ready for a well-earned nights sleep. Personally I am quite happy with both my team and our progress. I decided to participate in the board game part of the competition. I can’t say to much about it yet, but we are feeling confident about our progress. We have a plan, we have a prototype, and we even have a team name: Shugarrush.

"The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail." - Wikipedia

The group making process was much fun. First, we where given the main theme for the Global Game Jam (The Ouroboros), which we are free to interpret any way we want. Secondly, we were told to go around to different “idea tables”, each with their own minitheme. (See the photos bellow for a few of them)

Looking forwards to a day full of jamming tomorrow, and really looking forwards to see what the other teams have come up with. (Although I guess we won’t see until tomorrow)

Until next time, please enjoy these photos taken during the group making process. All photos taken by Samuel Walz (samuel.walz”at”gmail.com).

After a short dinner, the participants of the Nordic Game Jam where welcomed by none other than the Danish Minister of Culture, Uffe Elbæk. Elbæk addressed the participants with a speech pointing out the importance of video game developers in a modern society. His focus was on the creativity, ambitions and entrepreneurship of the video game society, and how we are still “the new kid on the block”. He then pressed on by saying that eventually the older kids will grow old and die, and that then we will rule the block! He did not seem as interested in the aesthetic parts of video games, but spoke rather about what we could learn from them. It’s nice to see how psyched he seemed about being here, and he seemed genuinely happy to get break from “regular politics” for a day or two.

Following the Minister of Culture was none other than Manveer Heir. Sounds familiar? It should. He is the senior designer for Bioware, and was the lead designer on Mass Effect 3. (On that note, he is expecting to shave in a few days, which literally will mean that Mass Effect 3 will be “done”)
Heir gave a very motivating talk, really setting the mood for the Jam. People seem to be itching to get started. Heir had a focus throughout the entire speech about allowing yourself to fail. Actually, I believe his exact words were to “Embrace fail”. He also spoke about ideas for how to fail as fast and early as possible, so that we had time to learn from our mistakes before it was to late. But what if you discover a mistake to late to fix it? Well, then you just take a dirty shortcut and cover it up!

Oh, and “#define max_christs 5″ is the greatest line of code ever written, and it is from the game “Worship”.

Sorry, no pictures yet. The show is about to start again!

Heroica: The Lego Board game. Presented at the Nordic Game Jam main track by Cephas Howard (Senior Design Manager of LEGO).
Howard presented an interesting and entertaining talk about Heroica and the development of the game. He introduced the game as a kid-friendly role playing game where the main idea is loosely based on Dungeons & Dragons, and that feeling really followed him trough the presentation. He talked, in detail, about multiple parts of the process, from the conception of the idea, to marketing it both to children and their parents. The game was meant to be fun to play for kids of all ages, and they really managed to do that in a good way.

It was interesting, and quite inspiring, to hear how a major company like Lego thinks in new ways. For example, Howard mentioned another game he developed, which was a card game based on the Heroica game. He came up with the main idea and major parts of the game itself withing one week. While on vacation. Of course, there was some minor tweaks later, but the game it self was mad during his vacation. Obviously, and he stressed this point, this is not the way Lego usually operate. Still, it’s nice to see that also these spontaneous ideas are appreciated in world-size companies like Lego.

Also, during this talk he introduced a new Lego board game they will be releasing later this year: “Star Wars: Battle of Hoth”. I look forward to trying it out.

On a side note, I really should start taking pictures here.

Hold on for more updates from the Nordic Game Jam 2012

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Alexandar Skronski
The Game Jam is getting started, and the participants are having to choose between the main track or the indie track for the first part of the day. I’ll be trying to jump between the tracks, giving you an insight to what goes on on both sides. Alexandar Skronski from Nokia kicked of the Main track by introducing the new Nokia Lumia 800, which uses the Windows 7 Phone platform. (28 of these phones are available for Jammers to use and try out during the weekend. Following Alex was Ian Qvist. Ian gave an introductory talk on the XNA Framework for developing on windows platforms (Phones, PC’s and 360′s)

Currently, Damien Morello from Recoil Games is talking about their game Rochard in the Indie track. Rochard was the first game for PS3 built on the Unity-3D engine, and is a 2.5D game about mining in space. (Check out the trailer!)
The game is also available on steam, so feel free to have a look.

More posts and pictures from the Jam will follow. Meanwhile,   do check out this blog by Andrew Borg Cardona, who is also covering the Jam.