On March 14 Santa Clara Games co-hosted the award ceremony of the
Global Game Jam 2014 in
Donostia with Pintxo
Developer. Our games were
nominated in two categories: Best Adventure Game for Alone in the
Forest and
Best Puzzle Game for Simple
Portal.
We were very happy to win both nominations! :)
Pintxos + beer + videogames = great success!!
The party was a huge success. In addition to the teams that participated
on the Global Game Jam, many people came and crowded the place. Between
the assistants, we had professionals from studios in the area, indie
developers, amateurs, students, players and people who came when they
saw the party going on and encouraged to come and witness the show.
@gravstar and @ipuntom during
the HassleHeart Trailer World Premiere
We took the oportunity to make a World Premiere and
revealHassleHeart's trailer (it will be soon available for
everybody, a bit of patience) and showed an alpha version of the game.
People had the opportunity to play and shared with us their feelings.
Firsts impressions of those gameplays were very positive and gave us
even more energy to have our beta release ready before summer.
One of our firsts players \<3
We already are looking forward for the #GGJ15
We really had a good time and enjoyed a lot the mix between pros,
amateurs, students and family talking about videogames. Soon we will
have more announcements about Santa Clara Games, Pintxo
Developer and HassleHeart. More
events have to come :)
Stay tuned!
The Global Game Jam in Donostia concluded last night (Jan 26th). It was
an awesome event. We had 25 participants, both amateurs to
professionals, and a total of 9 games were born over the weekend on our
location! You can check them all out on the Global Game Jame
website.
[caption id="attachment_707" align="aligncenter" width="700"]
Donostia GGJ2014 Jammers and Organizers[/caption]
Here at Santa Clara Games, we love to make games, but we wondered if we
would have have enough time to develop one while organizing this event.
Early Saturday morning, close to 1.30am, I saw Iñaki drafting up some
concepts on his notebook, and I said, "Hey buddy, things seem to be
quiet, and people are very focused on their jobs. Shall we design
something around the GGJ theme?", and he said "YES! In fact I'm playing
with some ideas right now".
After a short brainstorm we created "Alone in the
Forest",
an old-school exploration game. The game’s mechanics deal with the
player’s concepts of videogames and explores how different kinds of
players, seeing the same things, interpret them in their own way. The
player’s goal is to find the chest full of gold hidden inside an ancient
castle. We used
PuzzleScript to develop
our ideas. This is a fantastic tool for quick prototyping!
[caption id="attachment_678" align="aligncenter" width="400"]
Alone in The Forest in action[/caption]
You can grab the game at the Global Game Jam
2014
site, or feel free to use the "Fork" on
GitHub!
On sunday at 9:00am, we had finished uploading the game to the GGJ
servers and had completed all the game's sheet information. Then, I
realized that there were still 10 hours left until the event closed! If
I wanted to keep myself awake until then, I had to start on something
ASAP. I asked myself if I would be able to create a simple version of
Portal game using
Puzzlescript. With a few
concept proofs that I made in 10 minutes, I decided to chase down the
team and convinced them to help me make another new game using Portal's
mechanics. It sounded crazy! But they loved the idea of developing a
second new game in such short period of time!
The result was "Simple Portal - Take your
Cake". It's
a puzzle-based game in which the player must take the Cake using
portal's mechanics.
[caption id="attachment_708" align="aligncenter" width="560"]
Simple Portal - Take the Cake in action![/caption]
You can play the game
here
or visit the Global Game Jam 2014
website
to see all the details.
That's all folks! We hope you enjoy the games, and we're looking forward
to organizing the next Donostia Global Game Jam 2015!
The Global Game Jam 2014 is coming to our
city,
and Santa Clara Games will not only be taking part, but sponsoring it as
well!
We've been pushing to bring the Global Jam 2014 to Donostia. Santa Clara
Games will be organizing the event along with the folks from Pintxo
Developer.
Mr. Pixelsmith (@ipuntom) and the Undead
Pirate Captain (@gravstar) will both be
getting down and dirty. The Heart-Core developer
@twikoon is on a trip to the USA, but he
shoud be with us via Google Hangouts. We will be tweeting and uploading
photos and videos of the event as well as our super-amazing,
astonishngly incredible, made-in-48-hours game.
Stay tuned!