Sensory Game Jam (25 February - 1 March 2019)

The Sensory Game Jam (SGJ) was a week-long game jam that invited first- and second-year students from Abertay University’s BA (Hons) Game Design and Production programme. The SGJ featured eleven participants that self-formed into three teams. The SGJ was predominantly unsupervised with occasional progress checks from academic staff throughout the week. Students were afforded the flexibility of working on-campus, within pre-booked development spaces, or remotely. The culmination of the SGJ was a play-party in which students were afforded the opportunity to present, and gain feedback on, their games from their peers.

The context of the SGJ revolved around Sugaropolis: Transnational Foodways and Dietary Change in Scotland, an interdisciplinary research project which focused on the history of Greenock as a worldwide centre-point for capital investment in sugar (dubbed “Sugaropolis”). The theme of the game jam was “Sugar” and challenged participants to consider how games could explore the transnational history of Greenock through sense-based interaction.

Melody of Machines (Harry Dub, Luc Deligne, Celina Brylczak-Sztanka)

“In this game the player follows the journey of an Irish immigrant arriving in Greenock, Scotland, in 1865, trying to find his luck working in a sugar refinery. There he must learn the refining process, activating machines in the correct order each day. However, he is losing his sight rapidly, and must transfer his reliance on sight to a reliance on sound, all by listening to the Melody of Machines.“

The Smelly Buggers (Anthony MacDonald, Emelie Edholm, Gino Maurri, Ryan Goward)

“This game focused on creating an experience for people where they get to smell and then read about the memories connected to that smell. You open a tin and smell the aroma cube inside. Close the lid and touch the copper tape with your nose. On the screen a story will start where you get to now a person talking about their life.”