Ithaca College

On the weekend of January 23-25, Ithaca College students and members of the wider Ithaca community came together for the exciting 48-hour "Global Game Jam," an international event where designers from around the world join up at different locations to make games. The Ithaca College event site was sponsored by the video game trading service Leap Trade and by Comics for Collectors, a local comic book and game store. The event was hosted by the IC Game Developers Club and the Department of Computer Science. Fourteen developers worked over the weekend to create three innovative video games around this year's theme: "What do we do now?"

Two teams started with a premise originated by club member Kirk "Nort" Norton, riffing on how secondary characters in a video game might react to a hero who knows no limits and assumes their possessions are his for the taking.

"Orphanage" took a serious look at this idea, casting the player as the matron of an orphanage with the task of finding ways to stop the "hero" as he steals everything in sight. "Orphanage" was programmed by John Reeser, Jordan Riley served as Designer and artist, and Joseph Cartella developed character sprites for the game.

"Your Home, Your Castle" was a comedic take on the same concept. When a boy in blue pajamas breaks into the player's house and smashes all of their pots, it is up to the player, a common fantasy world villager, to find a way to keep him from coming back. "Your Home, Your Castle" was designed by Kirk "Nort" Norton, John Reeser, and Bill Rufkahr, with sound effects by Bill Rufkahr, music and voice acting by Jordan Riley, sprite artwork by Reyal Hoxie, and programming by Nort.

The third game designed over the 48 hour jam session was "Lucid," a game about a young hospital patient, perilously close to death on the operating table after a heart failure. The girl is in a dream-like state, racing a dark shade of herself through a series of life-or-death puzzles, piecing together the events that led up to her hospitalization.  Jeremy Block created art, effects, and sound design for "Lucid," Kate Wareham contributed character art and animation, James Smith worked on art and level design, Jordan Kolb and Charlie Wells composed the game's score, and Thomas "TJay" Cargle programmed the game and contributed additional art. 

Assistant Professor Nathan Prestopnik, Department of Computer Science, advises the IC Game Developer's Club and helped to facilitate the game jam event with many members of the club.

This year saw an increase in the number of participants for the Ithaca College jam site, a trend that will hopefully continue into the future. Every team had fun, learned a lot, and is excited for next year's jam. Congratulations to all the development teams who worked over the weekend to produce amazing games.