Nordic Game Jam is arguably one of the world’s biggest international game jams, boasting sponsors from Unity, Unreal, and various indie developers. One of the unique events that Nordic offers is the ability to work together with complete strangers – and that is exactly what I had set out to do!
You can try out the game now on itch.io! Link
Roles: Lead Producer, Lead Designer
Engine: GameMaker
The theme was “breaking point”. From here, it was important to mingle with as many strangers as possible. Eventually, I formed a team of five. My top priority was to create a comfortable and friendly environment, and to identify their strengths and weaknesses by beginning with simple tasks and learning about their backgrounds! Everything else naturally followed – with a tiny bit of warming up, everyone was very supportive of each other and open to learning. Teammates were kept working efficiently with a production pipeline created in Trello – if they were done with their given task another one was ready if they wanted to keep going.
Initially, we begun development on Unity, but eventually we made the switch to GameMaker, as it was much more suitable given the nature of the project.
Learning Outcomes
- Trello was incredibly helpful in scoping down the game and understanding whether there were people with particularly high workloads, and if I could redistribute these tasks to other people. Although not magnificently full, below is a screenshot,it was important to keep it simple. Otherwise, if the tasks were too precise, this could possibly limit people too much, especially given a game jam where we want to keep everyone flexible and imaginative, rather than be controlling.
- Design documents can be incredibly powerful for game jams, but they may not always be the right answer – but in this case it definitely was. By keeping our thoughts organised, and constantly remaining critical of whether the game was fun the way it was, we were able to deliver with an incredibly playful product whilst taking advantage of our large team size.
Reflection
- Always have a contingency plan. On the first day, our project went horribly south in Unity, but thankfully we had a prototype ready in GameMaker with all the essentials already in place. From there, we were able to continue working and finish the project in less than a day. This backup was only possible with a team as big as this.
- Go into game jams to have fun! Don’t let the pressure get to you. If the project goes south, accept it, calm down, and think of a plan. If it gets too stressful, sometimes it might be best to lay down and chill for a while. Most importantly, as a producer, make sure everyone else is okay, even if you’re busy just find the time and be updated on what’s going on. The worst thing you can do is to tunnel vision on your own work and forget that you’re there as a team! When you forget about everyone else, you have failed as a producer.
What’s Next?
- Maybe revisit the project in Unity and understand where the failures came about and reflect on them
- Main menu! (We don’t have one)
Hoyung Ling 
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