So this semester I had the opportunity to become a instructor facilitator for teams at Game Jam 2017 at Louisiana State University. A bunch of students had already formed groups. It was my understanding the team could be as big as we wanted. So, I ended up collecting seven or so students that hadn't found teams and wanted me to be their instructor. When we showed up at the game game it turns out we can only have 5 members per team. We found two extra students that didn't have teams and I had them split into two groups. One with 5 and and one with 4. Later on a coder from the computer science department joined up on the team of four! It worked out perfectly! I had 10 students that would not have gotten to participate and two teams! The theme was announced to be "1000 Kittens." meowwww..... The students were so creative and so amazing during the whole event. Spending the night. Sharing costs. Designing non stop. It was so awesome to watch. One of my favorite moments was watching students who in class didn't have a lot of voice speak up for themselves or become such a important part of the team. One team designed a video game with Game Maker and their expert coder. The game was called "Purr-acane." The game starts with a hurricane hitting and a old lady walking out side to catch the cats who were caught in the storm fall from the sky. There are dogs too but you don't want to catch them because it takes her longer to pull them from the sack. If you miss a cat they hit the ground and explode. The sounds were amazing and the graphics were so much fun. My second team created a board game that played on candy land. This game was called "Purr-fect Escape." The game focus on cats escaping the pound to make it past all the dangers in the world to make it to cloud 9 (9th life joke insert here). One of the students was asked to join the team at the game jam. Students really pushed themselves through exhaustion and issues with game creation. They showed a lot of care for one another and really came together even stronger in the end. This showed when the judges looked at their work. My two teams one 3 out of the 5 awards that were given for the competition. Jason and Vikki's team won the other two awards. All the team worked so hard. I am just so proud of them all. |
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