In a 48-hour gauntlet

Fuelled by fizzy drink and pizza, a team of game designers from Dunedin's Straylight Studios and University of Otago students created three games over a weekend as part of the worldwide Global Game Jam.

Participants had to make a game lasting no longer than five minutes, from scratch, in 48 hours.

About 1600 people in 50 locations around the world including France, South Africa, the United States, Denmark and Ireland took part over the weekend of January 30 to February 1. Teams in Dunedin and Hamilton were the only participants from New Zealand.

Straylight Studios chief executive Tim Nixon said the Dunedin team decided early in the brainstorming session on the Friday that sleep was paramount to successfully completing the challenge, so they agreed to sleep every night between midnight and 8am.

"We sort of took on the philosophy that we should be working smarter, not harder," he said.

Nixon said the Global Game Jam organisers had three constraints that all games in the competition had to adhere to: the game experience had to be no more than five minutes, it had to incorporate the theme "As long as we are together, there will always be problems" and had to incorporate the themes of cold, blank or modern somewhere in the game.

Nixon said after a brainstorming session on the Friday night, three ideas emerged for the games they would work on: Terraqua, My Mate's Drunk and Death by Toaster, all internet browser-based games. As of last week, all three games had received a four out of five stars rating from people around the world who have played the games.

One team had a fully working prototype of their game when the groups retired for the night on Friday, Nixon said. "It was actually quite hard to pull ourselves away at midnight, but we were in the lab by 8am (the next day) and just went for it."

Nixon said his team had a complete working prototype by midday that was "completely ugly, but was just testing the mechanics".

The task was not without technical hiccups, but Nixon said testing and refining sorted out problems by the end of Saturday night. "The last day was all just about refinement, polishing, getting all the assets in, bringing all the design code together so made a coherent and well presented experience."

Nixon admitted that being constrained to a game play experience of no longer than five minutes "was not really that hard, actually" but the most satisfying thing about the challenge was that it proved it was possible to create a small game that was fun within tight time constraints.

The most important element promoted in the competition was communication and teamwork, two things that were equally as important in the video game development industry, he said. "You can be the smartest coder or artist in the world, but doesn't mean crap unless you can work with the other guys."

The most satisfying part of the weekend was being able to play the finished game at the end. "It was a really an energising and exciting experience to be part of, because to make a game completely from scratch in 48 hours really confirms that it's possible.

It's just really exciting. It gives you a new perspective when you come back to work and reminds you that you are doing something really exciting."

You can find the three games created by Nixon and the team at Straylight Studios at these addresses:

* Terraqua: tinyurl.com/ae3xkl

* My Mate's Drunk: tinyurl.com/bwe5rb

* Death by Toaster: globalgamejam.org/games/death-toaster

- © Fairfax NZ News