Time was running out for the young witch.
As she wandered a desolate city searching for items such as discarded coffee cups and cigarette ashes, a timer nearby reminded her that she had potions to make. Rent, after all, was coming due.
The clock was also ticking for software engineer Derek Brown, who had 48 hours to create a video game from scratch. His game Potion Dash was meant to be a satire of the gig economy in which players control a witch who makes and delivers items such as hangover cures or elixirs that allow customers to chat with cats.
His goal then was to make a game that was playable, had a touch of personality, but also wasn’t a finished product. Commercial video games typically take years to create, and Brown didn’t have that luxury.
“Two days is not a lot of time,” he said, “and you have to be super careful about what your scope is.”
Brown was among programmers, artists and musicians huddled around screens for the first Nelson Game Jam last weekend. Game jams, in which teams are provided theme and a set time to build a video game from scratch, have been around for years. The end results don’t typically lead to full releases, although there are exceptions like the games Donut County and Hollow Knight.
Brown and his team of Dylan Powell, Erika Lundrigan and Ola Rogula needed to make something that merely worked by the end of the 48 hours — if it was fun to play, that was a bonus. As the finish drew near, Brown was satisfied with what they had. The core of Potion Dash was completed on Saturday, and Sunday was mostly used for polishing its rough edges.
Brown has taken part in other game jams and learned how grandiose visions can lead to failure.
“I’ve done the opposite a lot where you don’t scale properly and you’re rushing right up to the finish line and nobody’s sure what the game is exactly. You’re trying to answer that the whole time. But in this case, we figured out what our game was on day one, and we rushed towards the basic version of that.”
The event at the Nelson Innovation Centre was organized by Rogula, a local developer who specializes in dress-up games such as Doll Divine. Three years ago she relocated from Vancouver where she’d found inspiration and community at local game jams.
Developers, she said, can get bogged down in the years it takes to finish a project. Game jams by contrast encourage creativity and community.
“It was like such a hotbed of inspiration and collaboration and idea swapping, and I really had a good time with that. So I just thought it would be cool to start something like that up here.”
Teams typically have one core programmer who is familiar with engines, which are the software used to create games. They also can include artists and musicians to add visual and audio flair.
The Nelson Game Jam was the first for Lundrigan, a concept artist and illustrator who enjoys games but wanted to understand how they get made. For Potion Dash, she took inspiration from pixel art and the look of 2D platformers such as the classic Super Mario Bros. games.
Part of what she enjoyed at the jam was in how her creations were used. An item she might be asked to illustrate was then being used on screen in ways she found delightful.
“You’re flying by the seat of your pants trying to figure out how can I make everything match and look good and also be easy enough that anyone can pick up.”
The theme for the Nelson Game Jam was elemental forces. With that in mind, the team of Travis Martin, Cloud Edwards, Graeme Sherman and Carlos Banegas created Sail Jam, in which players navigate wind and water with a small sail boat while trying not to crash on nearby obstacles.
Martin, a database administrator, said he had to quickly familiarize himself with what a game engine could do. After that, the team tried to keep their concept simple and took inspiration from early classic games.
“At the very first stages when we brought the boat in, it’s just a triangle and you’re turning it. It had kind of an Asteroids vibe, which is a very classic video game and still holds up in delivering a gameplay experience with really simple controls that brings you in.”
It’s rare for commercial games to be built by just one person, especially when they are major releases. Over 1,100 people are credited in making last year’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which can take players over 100 hours to complete if they try to do every quest in the game.
But solo efforts do happen, and can be successful. In gaming the most prominent recent example of this is Stardew Valley, the farming game made by Eric Barone over four years. As of February it had sold over 30 million copies.
At the Nelson jam, Eric Sherman decided to go it alone as well. His game Disrupt features orb that takes on different elemental properties as players attempt to dunk it inside a volcano.
Sherman had also taken part in prior game jams, and remembered how he once expected the events to be more competitive in nature than they turned out to be. Nelson’s jam declared no winners. The prize, however, was a trio of games that only two days prior didn’t exist, as well as an appreciation for the craft behind the screen.
“You get to see everyone else’s creations and also just interact with them. When I was doing [a game jam] online, someone would comment on mine, and then I would be like, ‘oh, this is nice that this person did this so I’ll go play and comment on theirs.’ It kind of felt like a lot less competitive and more just an opportunity to make something and do something fun.”
Want to play the three Nelson Game Jam games?
Potion Dash: https://magicmissilegames.itch.io/potion-dash
Sail Jam: https://cloudedwards.itch.io/sail-jam
Disrupt: https://9thvisionary.itch.io/disrupt