Spooky Jam

What a weekend!

This past weekend some JDE members participated in Spooky Game Jam 2018, organized by the Voxelles, Sugar Gamers, and IGDA Chicago. This year it took place 2112 Chicago’s lovely facility. With the theme being fear with had members in three different groups during the Jam.

One team contained Thomas Newsome and Kailey Phan Mitchell. Their game Searching is about trying to overcome the fear of making friends in school.

You play as a little grey figure that walks around the school hallway until you bump into an NPC. Once you bump into someone else you enter a “battle” mode where you have to try to maintain your confidence level while talking to them. If you succeed that friend starts to follow you around. If your confidence level drops to low the game ends but if you survive and need to reheal up on your confidence there is a garden area where the player can regain their confidence. Finally, at the end of the hallway, the player is lead into the cafeteria where their newly found friends leave them. The player is then faced with another character similar to them where the player must learn how to adapt to different friend types.

If you want to play the game here is the itch page: Searching

A ragtag group of rogue programmers consisting of members Zac Mascarenas, Greg Mendez-Weeks, and the All-Powerful Vadym Yanchuk. They ended up making a masterpiece that went by the name of Mr. Steak. A play on the word mistake that became something so much more.

In their game, you play as an average everyday serial killer, and like everybody else, you have a day job to do just to get food on the table. Just like everyone else, you bring a bit of home with you to the office. In your case, that’s a duffel bag full of body parts of your last victim. Your goal is to get rid of the evidence at your least favorite coworker’s cubicle, while also trying to keep your identity a secret.

Since Zac touched the game, that means there is a physical controller aspect involved. To keep your identity secret, you have to make small talk with passing co-workers. This is where the new and improved Skull Controller comes into play. To talk in the game you have to clack the jaws together. Failing at this small talk can lead to the reveal of your identity meaning you’re probably gonna get fired and it is game over.

Check out the game at: Mr. Steak 

*For the best experience find Zac and Greg for them spicy controllers

The final JDE team that attended the spooky jam was comprised of Don Herweg, David Wales, Andy Bagdady, Eric Moen, and Daniel Song.  They decided to make an audio-based puzzle game titled Auditory.

The gameplay involved using the right analog stick of a controller almost like a dial to listen in to the whispers of the haunted house you were escaping.  One of the voices would tell you which of the three doors in front of you was the correct door, but the other voices could mislead you.  All the while, there’s an unseen monster slowly creeping up on you the longer you wait and listen to the voices; wait too long and it’ll catch you.  The goal of the game was to reach the end of the house after choosing all the correct doors.

Their team was known as the loud group of the jam, screaming and yelling in the seclusion of their workroom in order to get all of the audio for the game finished.  They also recruited Kailey Phan Mitchell, who was working on Searching with Thomas Newsome, to provide some incredibly creepy voice acting.  We also had some great cackles and craziness from Don Herweg’s voice acting for some of the misleading voices.  With some audio editing from Eric Moen, incredible coding wizardry from David Wales, Don Herweg, and Daniel Song, and amazingly spooky art from Andy Bagdady, they were able to put together quite a fear-filled game.