Scottish Game Jam, the branch of the event in which I participated, was hosted at Glasgow Caledonian University, organised by the fantastic Romana Khan. Nine teams took part in the Saltire Centre, an impressive (though bright) space, loading up on caffeine and sleeping on couches (if at all).

My team “Frat Boys from the Hood” consisted of Abi, Jess, Andrew and myself from Abertay joined by Alex, a third year student from Glasgow Calendonian. Working on a theme of deception and constraints mandating that we must include “a sink, a wink or a rink”, we built the 2d side-scroller “Panda Dragoon: Bees on Ice” with the aid of the Unity engine.

The game places our panda protagonist in a black and white world, fighting deceptive and equally monochrome foes. Gliding through an ice rink, the player must switch between black and white in order to see enemies of the opposite colour. However, switching also empowers these enemies—the player must be cautious—causing them to change form and cause increasing damage. Luckily, the player is equipped to defeat these creatures by firing bees from its mouth. The aim is to progress as far as possible as the game increases in speed, achieving a maximum score.

Although the event overall was non-competitive in nature, Scottish Game Jam welcomed judges from Denki and Real Time Worlds to critique the resulting applications and to decide on a winning game.

Much to our surprise We Won!

It was really reassuring to make such a self indulgent game, for ourselves and not for a nominated target audience, and yet have four out of five judges award it their highest score. Obviously the game has flaws, we made it in 48 hours, but with another week of tweaking at some point hopefully we can create something compelling and genuinely fun.

Overall, I had a fantastic time and would encourage any developer, especially artists, to take part next year. It’s amazing how much you can learn and achieve in just two days.

Download and play The Game.
Global Game Jam
Scottish Game Jam