Week 7 Game Jam (22-26 October 2018)

The Week 7 Game Jam (W7GJ) was a week-long game jam that invited first- and second-year students from Abertay University’s BA (Hons) Game Design and Production programme as an opportunity to develop confidence within the game jam format. Sixteen students voluntarily registered to participate in the event, which led to five teams consisting of three-to-four members each. The W7GJ 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 W7GJ was a play-party in which students were afforded the opportunity to present, and gain feedback on, their games from their peers.

The W7GJ was delivered in collaboration with the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), who provided the theme for the jam. The theme, “Decisions”, challenged the teams to consider causation and consequence of decision-making mechanics within the context of the highly-sensitive and critical nature of the various services provided by NATS. Representatives of NATS attended the play-party and provided feedback to the student teams on their games from the context of operations, training, and staff development.

Damage Control (Brentton White, Matthew Stark, John Ferry)

“Damage Control is a rudimentary management simulator, in which the player takes on the role of an Air-Traffic Controller in the midst of an international crisis. The primary gameplay loop involves the player deciding between which planes land within their borders, and which are re-routed to international airports. This is accomplished by having the player click on the planes directly. Once the player has clicked 3 planes, they may end the turn by clicking the ‘End Turn’ button at the bottom of the screen.

We wanted to create a game in which the player is forced to make executive decisions within what could be considered ‘No-win’ scenarios. There is no way the player will successfully land all of the planes, and the decisions they make will determine whether or not the crisis boils over into something more severe.”

Come Die With Me (Lachlann Ryan, Luc Deligne, Harry Dub)

“Come Die With Me is a physical board game for two players, who must cooperate to solve puzzles within a time limit. One player is a passenger on a plane and has been asked to fly after the pilot was rendered incapable. The other player is an air traffic controller trying to guide the passenger over the radio.

One player is presented with a series of problem scenarios while the air traffic controller has a manual on how to solve those puzzles, but neither player can see what the other does. They must successfully complete three puzzles to land the plane before five minutes are up and the plane crashes.”