Welcome!

Hello and welcome to all students at Malmö University’s Game Development program! 

First, second and third years – what do we all have in common? Our love for making games, of course! This is why you’re now invited to participate in the Game Lab Jam!

What is the Game Lab Jam? 

The term “game jam” originated from the idea of musicians gathering and playing music (jamming) together. Similarly, developers can meet as a team to create a video game in a short amount of time. 

The aim of this game jam is to improve a sense of community and to socialize between the years, so that we can learn from each other and better our teamwork while also partaking in an activity we’re all passionate about. This is an event for the students, by the students. 

You will soon be able to fill out a sign up form where you specify talents, interests and if you have any friends that you would like to partner up with. We will then sort you into a mixed group with freshmen, juniors and seniors. The theme and limitations of the jam will be revealed to you on the first day of the event, after which you will get started on your projects! 

Developers of all skill levels are not just allowed but encouraged. Don’t hesitate to participate if you’re new to coding or game jams, because this friendly event is for everyone :) 

This Jam's Theme

The theme of the jam is "Odd Powers"!

When is it? 

31st of March 17:00 - 2nd of April 17:00. 

Deadline for signing up is the 17th of March 23:59. 

The groups will be announced on the 27th of March. 

A more detailed schedule will be released soon. 

Where is it? 

The game laboratories in the university building Orkanen, more specifically OR:A332 and OR:A333. 

Food? 

The Student Union has generously offered to sponsor us by providing us with a grant that will cover snacks for the duration of the jam! There will be pauses in the jam where people can go and buy food together.

Schedule

During the Jam, a number of things will happen! To make it easier to have an overview, we have created this schedule that we will (try) to follow!

Friday: 

17:00 - Start of the Jam!

17:30 - Creativity Workshop

18:30 - Dinner

21:30 - Quiz

Saturday:

12:00 - Lunch

16:00 - Event

18:30 - Dinner

Evening: Games and Movie

Sunday: 

12:00 - Lunch

15:00 - Wrap up

17:00 - Submission deadline!

Preparations

To sign up for the Jam, please press the join button at the top of the page, as well as fill out the following form: https://forms.gle/YuDBPNGjfcjGEsaY7

If you've never partaken in a jam before, especially through Itch, we suggest that you read a guide on the basic concepts of a game jam. If you don't have an Itch account already, create one to sign up for the jam and be able to vote on the games after the jam is complete! 

To prepare for the Jam, you and your group are allowed to create a project (Unity, Monogame etc...) as well as a git repo. If you're thinking about using specific assets, these can be added to the project as well, though do beware that they might not fit the theme of the Jam! Although you may not begin development of anything directly connected to the game.

Another thing you can do is to get to know your group before hand! What are everyone's interest in games? What parts of game development are they the most excited about? What role would they like to have in the group during the jam? All of these things are great to discuss before hand so you are ready to go when the jam starts!

Submitting a Game

To submit your game to the jam you upload your game to itch.io. Remember to make the game free and set the game to "Released".

If you're submitting a Unity game and want to provide a version that works in browsers, you should set compression type to Gzip from Unity's WebGL Player Settings.

Afterwards, return to the jam page and click "submit game" and choose your game from the dropdown menu, answer the required questions and then you've completed the submission!

If you want to make sure that the game has been submitted correctly to the jam, you can go to the games page and look for the badge that says "Submission to the Game Lab Jam VT 23" in the top right.

You can submit the game at any point during the jam, and it is always good to submit quite a bit before the deadline in case something goes wrong,  

Game Lab Info

The game lab's computers contains a lot of software designed to help you during the jam. Unfortunately, we are prohibited from downloading new software on the computers at this moment, so make sure that if you are preparing before hand, that you create a project that is able to run on the computers in the lab. 

Monogame and Unity 2021.3.8f is fine on the computers, but unfortunately they do not support Unreal Engine yet.

Of course, if you want to bring your own computer and develop on that, you are more than welcome to!

Another exciting thing is that we have managed to gain access to the game lab for the entirety of the week end, which means that the usual closed hours between 22:00 and 06:00 does not apply to us! This means that we are free to sit and jam, hang out, socialize and eat until we drop! (Out of obligation we must inform you that no one should do any of those things "until they drop"...Jam responsibly!)

Remember that in order to access Orkanen and the game labs during the weekend, you need to have a multikort and your card pin. You can find more information regarding multikort here: https://student.mau.se/stod/it-service/datoridentitet-och-multikort/

Who is organizing it? 

Valter Lindecrantz - 3rd year 

Malin Ågren - 2nd year 

Kim Svedberg - 1st year 

If you have any questions, feel free to shoot any of us a message on Discord! :) 

You can also get more information regarding the Jam on the schools discord channel!