In January of 2017, 1212Gaming participated in a Global Game Jam where we learned a lot.  What did we learn?  Probably the most important thing we learned, or perhaps confirmed, is that we can work together through the creative process.  We can in fact, create something together.  I think we both figured that was true, else we would not be doing this, but it was nice to confirm that.  I learned that Portland has good beer. 

The Game Jam we attended was in Portland OR, put on by the local PIG Squad (Portland Independent Gaming Squad).  Lots of good people, if a little weird around the edges; but considering it was Portland perhaps it was just normal.  Trump had just been elected so they were in full protest, though it doesn't take much for them to get their protest on!  despite the local shenanigans, it was a great event.

The prompt this year was "waves".  So we didn't stray too far from our roots and chose to use the idea of radar waves as a basis for the game.  We'd kicked around several similar ideas already so we decided to build a kind of tower defense game based on radar intercepts.  As we're older retired types, we did all this over a beer and some food.  Was great for the creative juices! 

We used the Unity game engine and within 3 days we had cobbled together a bit of UI and a single level.  While it was far from the polished end result most of the teams came up with it was a significant step for us. 

For my part I came into it knowing how to open up Unity and that was about it.  By the end of the 3 days I could do some very basic manipulation, and probably more significantly I had learned quite a bit about how to navigate through the program and how it worked in a basic sense.  Mike did all the coding, but I could help around the edges.  Pretty good for a couple of retirees.

We've continued to work on this basic game, added some levels and learned a bit more.  The game jam was a big step, there are larger ahead.  The question now is, which door?