This weekend I was a part of this year’s Global GameJam in Sydney. I ended up working on the sprites and backgrounds for Zombie Sheep (pictured) - a flash based game where you play a dog rounding up sheep to protect them from an oncoming herd of zombie sheep for as long as possible.
The experience was pretty cool. There were tons of awesome people and I made a whole bunch of really awesome new friends. Sleep deprivation sucked - I really wish it were a three day 48 hour hacking event instead of two days without break. I was also pretty disapointed that so many of the Sydney Jammers were much less interested in making fun games than in making visually impressive ones. Most of the games sucked, including the one I worked on. I hesitate to even call it a game because I contend that this thing is not fun, and that fun is the very definition of a game.
Click through to play Zombie Sheep. There’s also a prototype of the game I wanted to make, which other team members rejected (primarily because it didn’t use a path finding algorithm they insisted on writing).
Despite the sucky aspects, I had a really good time and would love to GameJam again next year — I’ll be sure to make an actual game though, even if it means going solo!
