This weekend was TIGJam! (A game jam organized by TIGSource) It was a lot of fun! We did a lot of jamming! Here are some highlights:
- Participating in the “hey let’s make a game in 1 hour” minijam. (We took 1.5 hours, but it was fun anyway. We weren’t the only ones who went over.) The inestimable Brendan Mauro handled the art, while Jim Crawford and I sat and stared at code. We made a game about steadily expanding sumo wrestlers, and maybe when I get some time I will post it here because it is rad.
- Eating lunch with random indie people who were visiting from Canada, making jokes about how everyone in Canada knows each other, bringing up Kate Beaton as a shining example of Canadiosity, only to discover that not only does he, in fact, know her personally, but he used to be her roommate. Inescapable Conclusion: Everyone from Canada knows each other. This has now been proven by Science.
- Admiring Brendan’s fine collection of Lego art, depicting various indie games. (It is a testament to his lego skillz that they were all quite recognizable in spite of the transition between mediums.)
- Discovering over lunch that Brendan was into Celtic tunes, and I am into Celtic tunes, and I had my tinwhistle, and he had an accordion, and having an impromptu jam session out in the parking lot. (He actually didn’t have his accordion with him, but serendipitously, someone else had brought one which we were able to commandeer.)
- Watching the epic Red Ice tournament on the big screen.
- Watching Team Meat give out Meatboy sound tracks, and then write terrible, terrible things on them, at peoples’ request.
- Seeing all the simply amazing things everyone else was working on. There was probably too much to list, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most right now is probably “Eels being dicks” simply because it had a name that was both awesome as well as incredibly apt.
So what have we learned from all of this?
Jams are Awesome.