But for games.

And shorter. 

Game Jams and Hack-a-thons are events where participants gather with a goal of building complete products together. Game Jams focus on games. Hack-a-thons are more generally about creating an app. We’ll use the phrase Game Jam for both in the rest of the article.

The idea is to create an intense, time-boxed period of creativity. 

Some common features of Game Jams:

• Time frame. Traditional in-person game jams happen over a weekend. Virtual events can be anywhere from a weekend to a month. Set students up in a library or classroom for the weekend, overnight, or every day for lunch for a week.
• Theme. Most game jams have a theme, to give creators a common starting point. Sometime it’s specific like “School Pride”. Sometime’s is purposefully vague to encourage creativity like “Lost and Found” or “Duality”. Sometimes it’s a specific problem areas: “Build games to teach basic math concepts”
• Teams. To create the best experience for everyone, try to get a diverse set of participants: coders, musicians, artists, designers, organizers. You should have some experienced participants to help mentor beginners. In the middle of a jam you’ll often hear of late comers: “Hey, we have a new ___. Anyone need another __ for their team?”
• Share. Schedule some time at the end of the game jam to allow teams to present their creations to everyone. Encourage them to talk about how their game relates to the theme, how they came up with the idea, how the short time affected their design and development process, and how different team members contributed.
• Prizes. Some jams are just about participating and building, some include a prize component where the best projects are selected by the whole group or by independent judges.

To learn more about Game Jams in an Educational Setting:

• Students As Designers: Game Jams!
• Game Jams In Formal General Education
• Student Game Jams

Some public game jams to share with your students:

• Global Game Jam is the premier worldwide game jam, held every year in January.
• Games for Change host Game Jams as part of their Student Challenge.
• Itch.io host numerous community run game jams throughout the year.

The post Activity Ideas: <strong>Game Jam / Hack-a-thon!</strong> appeared first on GameSalad.

Games were judged on originality, design, and lack of bugs! There were High School and Middle School divisions as well as team and individual competitions for each. Our second year of competition, this year’s winners received cash prizes, t-shirts, and GameSalad Pro licenses!

First up, we have a number of notable games that didn’t win, but their fun and creativity warranted honorable mention! 

Honorable Mentions

High School team Meatbag Games from Southside High School in Ft Smith Arkansas brings us Claustrophobia: Into the Lungs of Hell, a survival horror game that we’re still puzzling over! Play it here: https://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/165330

Next up, Ridge Colquitt, also of Southside High School captured our hearts (or maybe stomachs) with Burger Builder! Play it here: http://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/165996

And now, on to our winners!

These students captured top prizes in their respective competitions, bringing us games that were largely bug free, well designed, with solid and fun game play!

Winner – Middle School Individual Challenge

Austin Zgoda of Hasbrouck Heights, NJ is taking home the scholarship prize for the Middle School Individual game creator with “The Legend of Purple Chicken: Power of the Poultry”. In the game, you control the titular chicken as they flap their way around spikes on a journey home(?). Play it here: http://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/167499

Winner – High School Individual Challenge

9th grader Soren of Douglas High School submitted the top game in the Individual Challenge with their charming platformer Alien Adventure. The game’s polish, including in-game tutorials and a world map made it the best game in a very close field. Play it here: http://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/165449

Winner – High School Team Challenge

Team Waterdrinkers from Southside High School in Fort Smith took home the High School Team Game Prize. Consisting of Dang Nguyen (9th grade), Christian Rawley (10th grade), and Matthew Senetho (11th grade), their tower defense game Resist the Unknown, lets you take control of Resistor Force as you protect Murica’s precious mineral asteroid! Play it here: http://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/165395

Congratulations to all the winners and a shout out to ALL entrants for meeting this year’s GameSalad Game Creation Challenge!

To learn more about how to bring GameSalad into your classroom, visit: https://gamesalad.com/education

The post 2022 Game Creation Challenge Results! appeared first on GameSalad.

With the increasing popularity of hyper casual gaming, we firmly believe that first person 1D is the next dimension in gaming!

Your prototypical hyper-causal gamer are constantly looking for new addictive, easy-to-play experiences.

With GameSalad First Person 1D technology, we take way horrible things that may get in the way of users enjoying your game: bad artwork, difficult gameplay, complicated control schemes.

 “Everyone is always thinking forward. Backwards is the new forward!”

– Anonymous Innovative Game Developer

With GameSalad Creator 1D, we make it extremely easy to build your own video games in first-person 1D video game!

Take a look at this example (excuse the debug info):

You can use the ‘W’ and ‘S’ keys to move forward and backwards. We also automatically change your view so you can see in the direction you are moving, seamlessly!

With our advanced 1D Lighting Engine, we properly simulate light in a 1D environment. Which is to say, light is at a constant intensity as light doesn’t diminish with distance in a 1 dimensional space.

We look forward to seeing what our creative community builds with this new technology. A top mobile game? A new hyper-casual metaverse? The line’s the limit with GameSalad 1D!

Watch a demo of our new GameSalad Creator 1D editor: https://youtu.be/4S3yxJHKBiE

Learn more about building your own video games quickly and easily with GameSalad: https://gamesalad.com/developer

The post A New Dimension of Play! appeared first on GameSalad.

Looking for a last minute Valentine’s Gift?

Is quality optional?

Let an AI (OpenAI’s GPT-3) generate a valentine’s poem for you!

How does it work?

This GameSalad game makes a request to Glitch REST API.

The REST API makes a call to OpenAI with a prompt in the form of: “A [type] poem for Valentine’s day for [topic]”.

OpenAI does it’s AI magic and generates a poem based on said prompt,

Glitch transforms it into a format GameSalad can understand,

and GameSalad displays it for you!

All you have to do is click on the image icon on the bottom right and you now have your very own AI generated custom Valentine!

You’re welcome (we think)

Happy Valentine’s day

The post AI Valentine’s Day Poetry appeared first on GameSalad.

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Learn more about her story:

https://www.ksl.com/article/37349079/utah-teen-builds-successful-app

https://www.deseret.com/2016/4/8/20586191/16-year-old-st-george-girl-designs-free-gaming-app#kelsea-barker-is-the-16-year-old-creator-of-hue

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He release his first iOS GameSalad Game, Penguin Pounce! and received 150,000 downloads.

Since them he’s been a leading community member on GameSalad’s forums and an entrepreneur contributing to GSHelper, the leading GameSalad asset marketplace.

He went on to study Computer Science and he’s now a professional web developer and programming blogger.

He’s also the voice of GameSalad for Education as the narrator in GameSalad for Education’s tutorials.

Check out his article about GameSalad!

https://braydoncoyer.dev/blog/no-code-build-games-with-gamesalad/

The post From Teen To Developer and Educator! appeared first on GameSalad.

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