Ukie GameJam!

So over last Monday and Tuesday I participated in the UKIE GameJam! This is an event where they lock a smallish group of game designers in a room together and throw in a pizza or 2 at dinner time and hopefully at the end of the 48 hour experience there are a couple of games to show.
It was my first time doing a games jam ever so I was a little worried about how much I could offer not being very experienced at coding or really completing any games based project yet.  Thankfully there was quite a lot of modeling work we wanted doing for this project so I took on the modeler role :)
It was pretty intense but I was really happy with the amount we got done in such a short time span.  So we had Kai as character artist and animator, Ana as our master coder and me as modeler.

Early stages of development with Will Freeman @spadgy_OTA he was a big help in the concept stage!  Also helped us reign in the ideas a little to keep them plausible.

Ana our second year coder! did a great job putting everything together and also added a very effective car crash animation which has had everyone laughing so far :)

Kai set us up with some very cool animations which were crucial to the project!

Our game was a 'dating sim, plate spinning' exercise.  Our main character Bret has one last chance with his girlfriend Brenda.  She has accepted one last date and Bret wants to make sure this goes perfectly... so he clones himself using a fridge like machine in the back kitchen of his restaurant, of course.  His clones are then sent out to act as musician, cook, bartender, waiter etc to ensure the date goes perfectly.  The only problem is that Bret's clones are a little unstable and need micromanaging to make sure they stay on track.  This leaves Bret splitting his attention between keeping Brenda entertained and making sure none of his clones go haywire!  

Level blocked out :)

Setting up the initial static camera to keep all the characters in frame. 

While testing out the UV's on my models I wound up with a fun disco intermediary for the game level!  Looks like a real hard game of twister!  

Not a real mainstay in Game Jam work but we did have to incorporate a cut-scene to set up the story.  In an ideal world we were hoping to have a clone generating mini game but there just wasn't enough time.

A look at the final product, This is the violin camera focusing on one of Bret's clones complete with a mustache disguise!

A great part of the Games Jam of course was the catering! which came in 3 parts, free pizza from Square Enix Thanks!! fruit and ice cream from our course leader Jon and chicken and mac'n'cheese from my wife Jen yum!

So it was a crazy experience but we did manage to ship! though it was a little touch and go towards the middle of day 2.  There are also quite a few bugs left right now... eg. no victory condition yet but there is a good fail screen and if you leave the game to play itself it is really funny!  We are planing to work out the last few bugs before we put it out on the net.