J. Carlos Roldán

This weekend I was at the Global Game Jam (GGJ) creating a game in 48 hours with @pabletos and @j_coronel. The result turned out pretty cool, so I'm sharing it here.

A game jam is an event where participants develop a game around a theme within a time limit. GGJ is an annual global event with physical venues all over the world, like the one hosted by espacio_RES this time. The time limit was 48 hours, and the theme was Duality.

We had participated in other jams before, such as the Familiar Game Jam, Ludum Dare, or GM48; however, this is one of the most polished games we've made in such a short time. The mechanics involve overcoming levels of a roguelike (a turn-based exploration game) by adding pieces to a board.

The board's behavior is quite simple: it reads instructions from top to bottom (like a Turing machine) and applies them to the player. The mechanics are quite emergent, and with very few elements, many different strategies can be found, so we'll keep refining it to upload it to the App Store.

Despite having participated in many jams, this was the first time we didn't opt for the remote mode. And although being in a house for 48 hours in 'cave mode' making a game is not bad at all, meeting so many talented developers, designers, and artists is incomparable, so we will definitely repeat the experience.