So, I did the Global Game Jam this year. It was crazy, and fun, and crazy fun. I met some awesome new people, and dusted off my modelling skills for 48 hours. The above image contains the majority of assets I made. Most of the textures were made by me, but the Cthuhlu logo was made by my good friend, and fellow artist on the project, Corey Sewell. So, as a look back on the project, I'd like to go over the good and the bad.

The Project

The Team

• Noah Koss (The programmer)
• Corey Sewell (The artist)
• Scott Wilson (The me)

The Concept

The game is called Mall of Cthuhlu. It stars a disciple of the Elder God, tasked with stealing a random item from the mall. All of the guards know about this person, and will arrest them on sight. The disciple must hide and block the guards from apprehending them so they can successfully grab the item and send it back to their truck.

The Tools

• Atom
• Blender
• Inkscape
• Krita
• Maya
• Mono Develop
• Photoshop
• Unity

The Good

• We had 2 artists to 1 programmer. I think this is a good ratio, because content usually takes a bit longer than programming.
• The project was scoped to the size of team. By the end of the jam, the game was feature complete, and playable. There were some bugs that we would have liked to iron out, but the minimum viable product was there.
• Our team dynamics was pretty great. There was no drama, and everyone worked hard to produce the game. We all enjoyed working with each other, and I think it was a good idea to have worked with someone I have worked with in the past.
• We worked with Tree of Audio guys, and they were wonderful to work with. If I did another game jam, I would work with them again. Heck, if I ever made a game, I'd work with them again.
• I took the Monday after the jam off. Last time I did the jam, I was horribly sick, and had to take time off anyways to recover. This time, I prepared a bit better and scheduled time off.

The Bad

• Although the game was scoped well, we should have pushed a bit harder to have a playable version earlier in development. While the game is playable, there are some pretty big bugs and gameplay issues that could have been sorted out if we had more time to play test.
• We didn't really set out any art/ design docs to go off of. We were making things a bit too textured for our original idea. So, while it still worked in the end, having some sort of style/ colour guide to fall back on would have probably helped a lot.
• One thing we should have done is talked to the Tree of Audio guys earlier. We were only able to get the temp music in, and that would have not been a problem if we talked to them sooner, and gave them more time. Also, we weren't able to add all of their audio assets to our game.

The Ugly

• While this was out of our control, the internet was terrible. Part of the reason why we didn't submit the game was because the internet was down at the jam site when the 3 pm deadline hit.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I thought it was a fun experience, and I'd do it again. Thanks again to Corey and Noah for teaming up with me, Tree of Audio for producing some lovely audio assets, UBC for hosting the jam, the volunteers, and the people that put on the jam. You are all great.