Gamechanger: Students’ insights on this year’s Game Jam

Games Art, Design and Programming students and graduates came together this week to make the “best game possible” at the University’s annual Game Jam.

YamJam Fest ’23 ran from Monday 23–Thursday 26 January. UON students and graduates from its Game courses were invited to create a new game from scratch.

However, this year there was a catch! Students were given a theme or technology which the game needed to be centred around, with this year’s requirement being that it needed to include light guns.

This piece of technology is often used in arcade games. With previous given themes including creating rhythm-based games and games on the Energy Tower screen, this year’s innovative outlook was certainly set to be an exciting task.

Lulu Pauling and Rowan Hawkins-Oldfield took part. “It’s a mix of the artists, the programmers, the designers”, says third-year student Rowan. “We even had somebody from graphics communications working with us as well. The light gun idea was an interesting curveball they threw at us!”

Graduate Lulu says: “Last year we had to make a game to go on the Energy Centre’s Power Tower and the year before that they gave us more of a standard theme so this year, to have a different input as a controller was really cool.”

The Gaming Jam is a voluntary event that benefits students by allowing them to expand their portfolio and, for the Games Art students, to step into art styles they might not usually encounter.

Lulu adds: “Normally, I work more on organic models such as trees and animals. However, this time, I’ve worked more on hard surface which includes man-made objects. To put that on my portfolio is filling a hole.”

Rowan adds: “I mainly like to focus on photo-realistic design, but we ended up doing quite a stylised sort of art style for this, allowing me to step out of my comfort zone.”

Stepping out of your comfort zone is something both Lulu and Rowan encourage other students to do, particularly future gaming students at University of Northampton. Lulu concludes: “It’s a good opportunity to try things that you’re not used to. Usually, when you do your assignments at university, everyone is given the same tasks. However, when you do the Gaming Jam, it allows you to be more flexible and gives you something else to have a go at.”

You can have a go at playing the final games here.