Global Game Jam over, Cape Town on the cards

Greetings to all from the muck-ridden wastes of the game developer's den! By nobly sacrificing restful slumber, ten litres of energy drink and two-thirds of our remaining collective sanity, Team Game Maker Totally Awesome has finally submitted its semi-official entry to the Global Game Jam gods. May our humble offering appease their mighty and terrible wrath.

A solid 48 hours of game development can take its toll. Pic unrelated, of course.

If these ramblings are confusing you too much (and you refuse to simply glance back a post or two for the full briefing), then here's the skinny: two of my Pretoria buddies and I recently entered the South African leg of the international Global Game Jam event (albeit remotely: the local comp was held in Cape Town) and were required to construct a game in 48 hours given a specific theme and other crunchy bits of criteria to get our heads around.

We divided the roles carefully amongst our squad of three to address all facets of the game development process: my job was to oversee sound engineering and muck around with the code whenever the lead programmer felt too lazy to write out his own algorithms. I also volunteered to crunch loudly on popcorn kernels and whine about random stuff whenever it seemed that things were going too smoothly.

In the end, our determined trio produced something which I was admittedly quite happy with: a nicely-polished sandbox game that had you mercilessly screwing about with the fate of two rival nations. It's incredibly deep and has a moving message if one thinks about it properly, though most people will probably prefer the cutesy graphics and high-pitched screams of battle that populate the game. They're way cool, after all.

The brown background stems from years of actual dirt studies conducted by a professional artist. We don't screw around.

If you're interested in having a gander at our final product, get it from Game.Dev or check out its NAG forum thread for more details about our goals and criteria and stuff.

Of course, my inability to actually get to Cape Town for the competition (combined with the fact that I've already spent a good few weeks in Pretoria) has left me with a little itch to travel to this land of flat mountains, funny accents and ridiculously cold ocean temperatures. I'll probably be hopping off to book myself a bus tomorrow – those who live in the southwest corner of our beautiful country had best beware, as I may well be seeing you within the week. More news on this will arrive as my plans become clearer.