Honeyslug

This is a guest post from Robin Clarke. Robin is a producer for www.Gimme5Games.com, and writes about videogames on his blog at www.citystate.co.uk

The World of Love conference. It threatened to draw an unprecedented horde of independent game developers to our nation’s noble capital, where they would surely be compelled to blurt scandalising ideas out of their disordered brains, to binge-drink, and to forever infuse ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ with apocalyptic portent. Such a volatile situation required delicate handling – as anyone who has seen the shameful aftermath of a TED conference can attest.

As luck would have it, celebrated indie scene-boffins Terry Cavanagh (DistractionWare) and Ricky Haggett (Honeyslug) were seeking to organise a weekend Game Jam around the same time. This event would act as a lightning rod, diverting the indies’ attention to their second-favourite pastime of making games. (Although regretably, a group of unrepentant maniacs had to be released into Kensington Gardens.)

The World of Love Game Jam was held at Honeyslug’s offices in Kentish Town on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th June 2010. It comprised of four three-hour jam sessions, and a proportionate amount of time in pubs and restaurants. Over the course of the weekend it is estimated that around 35 games aficionados made an appearance, from backgrounds as diverse as MMOs, social games, journalism, console development and academia.

The suggested themes of the sessions were:

1. Facebook, Traps

2. Vegetables, Hugs

3. Light and Shade, Water Water Everywhere, The Blob

4. The Jury, Reunion, Drifting

The results (that were deemed fit for public consumption) can be found at the Cambridge Friendship Club site: http://cambridgeindies.com/events/jam-world-love

A woefully incomplete list of attendees can be found here: http://lovejam.eventbrite.com/

My impression of the event (compared to the grand total of one game jam that I’d attended previously) was that it was remarkably quiet and intensive. While there was some collaboration going on, the majority were content to tinker on their own projects until (and beyond) the end of the allotted time before casually demonstrating them to the group.

As I spent most of my time squinting at Deluxepaint and inelegantly hacking at Python, I am sure I missed a lot of people’s stuff entirely, but out of things going on at my end of the room/things drawing the biggest crowds/things with the loudest sound effects, standouts were Terry’s Vegetable Game, Kieron’s VVVVVVegetable, Perrin and Terry’s Blind Faith, Alice’s VIDEO GAME, and Alan Hazelden’s blood-soaked tentacle-vs.-submarine game. The best game that I only found on the website afterwards ribbon goes to Don’t Eat Kittens. There were loads and loads more.

But as well as games, friendships were made, plans were hatched and fun was had (and other cliches). There are going to be more London-based game jams. Oh yes.