First and foremost, a huge thanks to Finnish Game Jam for the scholarship, covering the flights and accommodation for attending this game jam. To be honest I would not have come up with the idea of joining the jam myself, if it wasn’t because of the scholarship.
I actually learned about the scholarship and applied for it quite late, during the last couple of hours before the deadline. I was kind of uncertain if I filled it well enough, but it ended up fine after all.
I arrived in Copenhagen on the 2nd of April, the day before the kickoff of the events and the pre-party. It was my first time in Denmark, and since I had arrived earlier, I got to go around the city and visit some places that my friends had recommended to me beforehand. The weather was quite sunny and clear throughout the trip, which apparently was uncommon for that time of the year in Copenhagen, which made the experience even more enjoyable as a whole.
After getting some rest, the next day I went to the event location around noon. This year it was located at the Aalborg University campus in Copenhagen. It is a very nice set of rather large and connected buildings, right by the sea, with many windows facing the water. I had my lunch in the sunny terrace (with a view of the sea obviously), and it set me up for a very relaxed and cozy experience already.
The rest of the day was packed with talks. The topics were quite varied; from game AI design to game audio and music, and anything in between. I spent most of my day listening to the talks, obviously not missing on the audio talk of the day especially, since it would be a shame for me not to attend it as a composer and audio designer myself. I took a short break after the talks, and joined the pre-party a bit later.
It was a lively and at the same time cozy party. Met a ton of cool people, had pizza, and enjoyed the view by the sea. I made a few friends from Unity and ex-Unity people and spent most of the rest of my time with them during the party, and of course they got really enthusiastic about game music once they knew I was a composer. We talked a ton about it and shared a few of lesser-known favorite soundtracks with each other. I also met some of the organizers of the game jam, and we talked about the challenges and logistics of coordinating such an event, with around 500 participants attending each year.
The next day was also full of talks. This time, there was a game showcase event in the main area as well, with quite a few games from smaller and bigger teams, and I managed to play almost all of them. Parallel to the talks, there were also “icebreakers”; events that were devised to, well, break the ice between the jammers and help them find teammates. The good thing was that there were 4 icebreakers in total, so that anyone who couldn’t make it to any one of them, would have another chance to do so. I was taking part in so many talks and events that I missed all 4, and even then, there was a final Group Forming session, which was basically the same kind of idea as the icebreakers but more goal oriented and with an emphasis on finding a suitable team for everyone, without leaving anyone behind.
After going around the designated groups and getting to know the people and their preferences, ideas, and strengths, I found myself joining the same group of people and gradually shaping a team with them. It was a very natural process, and at some point we found ourselves in a circle and becoming a team of 6. Two programmers (Sanitate Stefano and Birsu Yilmaz), two artists (Mikkel Høgh and Marco Spörle), one designer, and me as the audio designer.
After the group forming event, we gathered in the main area for the opening ceremony and a lively keynote by game dev and youtuber Brackeys. The theme was revealed as “Eat or Sleep”. The idea was to choose either of those subjects as a theme freely, which would make you end up on Team Eat or Team Sleep. You could also of course utilize both subjects at the same time if you wanted to. I had seen various theme modifiers in different game jams before, but this was the first time that I had encountered a “double theme”, which I think spiced things up quite a bit. Shortly after, a few “side-quests” were announced. These were activities that every team could do to complete a quest; from helping out another team with their game, to building something with LEGO bricks with another team (since LEGO had a booth and a few activities in the main area during the game jam). After the announcements and the rest of the acknowledgements and dos and don’ts, the jamming officially began.
There were quite many rooms dedicated for the jamming teams all around the university building, and after a few minutes we found a suitable room and settled down. The game idea quickly shaped and after a discussion we managed to come up with a quite well-scoped plan. It was a game about an exhausted and sleepy guy who is trying to get some sleep, but every time he gets in bed and is about to fall asleep, a noisy event happens that needs to be addressed. A nice storyboard was drawn by the game designer and we discussed the scope of the game and the amount of the assets needed. We ended up calling the game “What’s that noise?”. It was already quite late, so we called it a day to get some rest.
The next day had a bit of an unpredictable beginning for me when I arrived at the university. Our game designer unfortunately had to leave the team due to personal reasons, so we had to move on without him and rearrange the roles and rescope the game quite a bit. We still had most of the game design elements missing, so we ended up spending some part of the day on that.
On my side, after discussing the technical and visual design of the game with the programmers and the artists, I began making a list of the required audio assets and started creating them. In the afternoon however, I had a portfolio review by Carl Lindegaard who is currently the sound designer and composer at Flashbulb Games. Turned out I was the only one who signed up and showed up for the audio portfolio review, so we actually ended up spending a lot more time than the designated amount. We went through each other’s works and experiences, and it was really nice that it ended up way more than just a review and instead became a warm and enthusiastic conversation. After our long meeting, I went back to making assets, and we also recorded the voice line (yes, we only had one line, one word to be specific). Funnily enough it took quite a few tries to get the right tone and mood. I went through most of the sounds during the rest of the day.
At that point we had gotten used to each other’s workflow. The team was really nice and helpful, and open to ideas. We got to know each other more and more, especially during break times. Whenever we needed a break, we could go to the main area (called canteen) and chill or engage in some side activities (building with LEGOs specifically) or just talk to people. The view to the sunny sea was also very calming throughout the jam and the atmosphere was very active and positive in general. The organizers and volunteers made it so that it was only about making games, connecting, and having a safe and comfortable environment.
The last day of the jam was mostly spent on adding the last of the content and fixing bugs. Most of the audio was implemented only during the last day, as usually ends up being the case during jams. So, I did some quick reiterations of some of the sounds that didn’t work well after I finally heard them in-game. In the end many of the sounds didn’t end up in the game, since we had to cut a lot of the functionalities and content because of time and technical constraints. Despite being out of schedule, we still managed to complete one of the side-quests, “Build something with LEGO bricks with another team”.
While the deadline approached at 15:00, we had a last minute game-breaking bug in the build, that got squished quite quickly so that the game could be playable. All the games were presented throughout the main area, and the relative calm of the canteen suddenly was broken with enthusiastic people setting up their laptops, playing each other’s games, and sharing ideas. It was quite a loud and crowded experience, but in all the good ways. I tested as many games as I could (including a co-op VR/non-VR game that was a first to me) and went to the teams I had talked to during the group-forming session to see how their ideas developed throughout the jam. The game ideas were all over the place of course. There were more than 100 game submissions and the variety in design choices and style were super interesting to experience.
Sadly, I didn’t get to test out as many of the games as I wanted, and I couldn’t stay for the closing words on the stage either. I had to move out earlier to catch my plane back to Helsinki.
I had taken part in quite a few game jams before, but this was definitely one to remember and cherish, and most of all I’m glad I could experience a quite different (but still familiar) game development scene, although not too far from Finland.
You can test our game here.
You can also find my contact information and other stuff at my website: https://alihosseini.net/