Since we’ve been a game Dev duo outside of our full-time jobs we’ve heard a lot about game jams. That there a good way to get ideas out quickly, try new tools and meet more people, so this month we thought we’d give it a go.

The game jam we’ve chosen to participate in is hosed by a charity called Autistica and an organisation called Tentacle Zone. We were particularly drawn to this jam because of the relaxed nature of it. The majority of jams I’ve seen online are around two to three days long and although they don’t encourage it, participants tend to work around the clock to produce the best game they can. As first-time jammers and part-time game developers that wouldn’t be something for us. Due to the nature of Hannah’s job she can’t take time off whenever she wants, only during school holidays so that isn’t an option for us unless we find a jam that matches with holidays. On top of the fact that she is pregnant and struggles to stay up past 9 pm means we can’t pull any all-nighters. The Autistica Play jam runs from the 2nd to the 9th of March, a lot more time than what I’ve seen in other great jams. Of course, not enough time to release a fully-fledged game but I’m confident we can produce something playable in our evenings and weekends.

This post has been written after the themes of the jam have been announced but before it has officially ended so we’ve had time to think about what we will create, one of the advantages of living together. Our experience with autism is quite small so we did a lot of research reading various blogs and watching videos on what we can do to translate the topic to a playable game. We like the idea of having playable animals in our game (if you hadn’t guessed that from our previous game), and we like the idea of shells. Coming out of them or staying in them so a tortoise is a natural fit. An autistic tortoise who struggles to go about his day.

We want to make the game really accessible so that even our mothers could play it, (or father’s), so we’ve opted for a point and click one. It’s not something we’ve done before so will be an interesting thing to try. If it goes well the control scheme could translate well to an iPad or mobile phone.

Having full-time jobs are not the only thing that will take up our time in the week of the game jam, we’ve agreed to a few social events too. Meeting my family in the weekend, sewing costumes for world book day, and helping out at a homeless centre are a few of the things that will take up our time this week. On another note twitch, the site that is used for daily updates, as well as discord, the site used to communicate with other jammers around the world, are both blocked at work. So I’m unable to participate in the daily updates or keep up with what is going on. And even though we have so many obstacles, I’m confident will have something playable by the deadline. Fingers crossed.