Fargo Game Jam 2016 builds on last year's success

This weekend, while many Fargoans sought refuge at lakes and public pools, more than a dozen video game enthusiasts and developers kept cool in the A/C of the Prairie Den.

Fargo Game Jam 2016, hosted by Fargo Game Makers and sponsored by 702 Communications, Greater Fargo/Moorhead Economic Development Corporation and Gravity Gaming, kicked off Friday evening as participants broke into teams and began brainstorming. Over three days, teams spent a total of 30 hours developing storylines, writing code, and designing graphics. Fargo game makers Aaron Simmons, CJ Schnase and Kyle Weik, who helped organize this year’s Jam, agree that two factors really helped them improve upon the inaugural event: time and branding.

Last year, Schnase and his team had just over a week to plan and advertise the event. The second time around, they had months to reach out to gamers outside of the Game Maker meetup crowd. Weik was even able to design a logo and posters.

Schnase said that the structure of the event– thirty hours spread out over three days– was another major improvement over last year’s event, which consisted of 24 straight hours of game-making.

“We were totally fried,” he said.

The extra time and effort that went into planning Game Jam 2016 definitely paid off. Attendance nearly doubled: five teams, teams ranging in size from one person to six, compared to last year’s three. A total of 20 developers participated, some working out of the Prairie Den, others Skyping in from across the country. The most distant competitors joined their team from California and Arizona.

And it is not just location that set competitors apart at Game Jam 2016. Some could be considered pro-makers; others had never written a line of code.

“We have a really wide variety of skills,” Schnase said. “There’s a lot of learning going on.”

One team, the crew behind “Viking Book Biter,” consisted entirely of Game Jam novices. None attended the event last year, and only one, Ben Lippincott, had ever worked with the game engine Unity. For them, the past three days consisted of a lot of Google searching and online tutorials.

“We’re kind of a team of misfits,” said Meg Ridl, one of the masterminds behind the game’s concept.

To be eligible to win, each team’s project had to relate to at least one of two themes: “Arctic” and “Literature.” And at 5 pm on Sunday, competitors were instructed to “put down their pencils” for a bit of show and tell.

In “Viking Book Biter” a viking, Lothar, wants to get some culture– so he goes to a library and eats some books.  When he eats a book, words fall out and it is up to you to put famous quotes back together. Then, you get imported into the world of the book for a minigame.

“It pops you into a scene where you’re trying to spear Moby Dick,” teammate Aaron Simmons explained.

In “The North Wind Saga,” an RPG/survival game, you play a lone survivor of an arctic expedition on her search for the wreckage of the Nautilus, vessel of the legendary Captain Nemo. The team behind this game had the biggest age gap of the bunch: Zebulon Rogers teaches teens to create video games at MSUM’s College for Kids, and Dave Binkard is the founder of PODS Game Design. The two were joined by students Chris (16) and Daylan (14).

“Library Defender” is a tower defense game, where the player must “save the last source of knowledge” from a hoard of frost creatures. Using AI algorithms, the frost creatures attempt to destroy the last source of knowledge. Bookcases with turrets designed to look like open books are placed for protection shooting what would eventually be words of doom.

The creators of “Sir John Franklin’s Lost Expedition in Search of the Northwest Passage” stood out among the competition as the only team to create both the hardware and the software for their game. In this physical arcade game, you, a single pixel,  are a member of Franklin’s shipwrecked crew attempting to avoid hypothermia, hypothermia, scurvy, and cannibalistic crewmates.

Even Schnase and Weik took a break from facilitating the event to tinker on a game, and came up with “Husky Run.” The game features both arctic and literary elements, the dog-sledding theme an homage to Jack London’s White Fang.

Each game has been uploaded to gamejolt.com, where they will be up for public vote until Wednesday, July 20. Gravity Gaming will be giving out $150 to every person on the winning team, a total of up to $750.  But according to Simmons, the prize the last thing on anyone’s mind.

“Everyone is just here to learn and get better,” he said. “If you win, that’s cool too.”

The winner of Fargo Game Jam 2016 will be announced at the next Game Makers meetup on July 27.