Global Game Jam 2024

It's been a long while since I've created a project of my own outside of work, and it's been even longer since I participated in a game jam or hackathon. However, this past weekend I had to opportunity to do both of these things by participating in Global Game Jam 2024 at NYU Game Center in Brooklyn, NY!

This year, the theme of GGJ was "make me laugh". With that in mind, my good friend @Wilbos_World and I set out to make the simplest and most frustrating thing that came to mind - a game where the character has to move excruciatingly slow and stretch before jumping. You can check it out here!. The game was made entirely in Godot, with custom art by @Wilbos_World and public domain music.

Even though this game is more of a proof of concept, we're proud of what we accomplished in ~6 hours, and it was very fun to make! This is just the start of my own personal effort to ship a new personal project each month in 2024. More to come on that.

Key Takeaways

• NYU Game Center is an awesome venue. The staff were really nice and accommodating. They have some cool custom arcade cabinets there as well!
• Godot is a very intuitive game engine. I definitely plan on using this for future projects, and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone else making a game.
• Game development is fun. I haven't worked on a game in over 7 years, and this experience quickly reminded me that I should do it more often.
• Sometimes stepping back from daily life and creating something start to finish is refreshing, no matter how small.