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I exhibited an updated version of OBSTACLES with some new art and leaderboard functionality at GamerFest 2020 in Thomond Park, Limerick. Here’s a few words about the experience.

Measures to prevent spread of Coronavirus COVID-19

This was yet another big event taking place during the coronavirus outbreak. Gamerfest adapted well and there was a lot of attention to hand-washing, hand sanitisers and wipes. Fair play.

On the Saturday that I was exhibiting I wiped down the inputs and controllers for each station in the Minecraft Zone and Indie Zone, along with Gamerfest volunteers.

As an event that appeals mostly to children, I got to witness how silly some children can be about these things. Picking noses, coughing, putting controllers in their mouths – pretty gross! That being said, I expect children to behave like this – they have so much going on in their brains who can blame them. It’s adults that I’d be rightfully disgusted by if they aren’t hygenic in public spaces, they should know better!

Big gaming conventions are quite new to Ireland too, so there’s likely a bit of lag there in terms of learning how to behave. We are accustomed to playing games in a home setting, a comfortable setting. Unless someone in your home was suffering from an illness, people may never have thought about cleaning their game controllers and input devices regularly to prevent spread of infection or whatever.

Here we are now, amid the media madness surrounding the coronavirus outbreak, and I am delighted that hygeine is taken very seriously by event management, organisers, volunteers, exhibitors and visitors alike.

Exhibiting an improved version of the same game

This time around I no longer have to keep track of high-scores with pen and paper! A fun thing to see people enjoy the improvements. Or more accurately, not notice when some expected feature was missing!

It’s always a lot of fun for me to see people playing and enjoying my games. I often find myself resisting the urge to show people everything in them, but I know it is better for me to observe and take notes. I look out for how quickly people learn the mechanics and the options they have available, as well as how quickly they master the game, and what things they don’t yet understand or realise about the game.

It might sound a little complicated, but when you’ve made everything yourself it’s not that hard to see when others don’t get it. Luckily there is an entire language of conventional solutions to problems I encounter.

The main issues with OBSTACLES are based around UI, repetitive soundtrack, and overall lack of progression. OBSTACLES offers a very immediate experience, with replayability coming from local hotseat competitiveness for high-score on the leaderboards.

As a little back burner project I had planned some levels/zones and mroe music anyway. From Gamerfest feedback/notes I have now added certain UI improvements to the mix.

I attended Games Fleadh for the first time yesterday. The athmosphere was both competitive and celebratory. Students had worked hard to make their games. Each team has a different story, each college and course has a different emphasis. Hard work has been put into every game, and we must congradulate everyone who has managed to get through the myriad challenges and hurdles to turn up at the Games Fleadh with a playable game – no matter what state of polish it may have.

This event seeks to recognise those who achieved highly in their efforts. While certainly there are games made here that are of high quality, and worthy of praise, I find it a little odd that the “playing field” is so unbalanced. We judge each submission we can get our hands on for the qualities present in that submission – we don’t account for the fact that some games may have months of development time, whereas some might have as little as four weeks.

As someone working in the games industry with years of experience of judging game jams, I was happy to volunteer as a member of the judging team.

The effort on display was awe-inspiring, with over 20 games from student teams spanning seven different colleges and universities.

I was impressed at how the Games Fleadh organisers and volunteers handled everything with professionalism and grace.

We had limited time to play each game and judge each game. However, these challenges were overcome easily by the experienced Games Fleadh team. The judges were grouped into judging teams, each assigned a list of games to judge and given guides on how to award points for each category. Very efficiently done.

I also noted that the students were often using disposable gloves, and they regularly wiped down game controllers and input devices after being used. I guess this is a sight we will see more of at large gatherings, and honestly, I am relieved about this. Fair play to everyone involved.

Big thanks to Sam Redfern (Psychic Software) for the lift to Tipperary and the recommendation.

Hi folks,

Thanks to everyone for helping to make Global Game Jam ’20 another success, and especially to our great team of organisers and shed full of jammers at the Galway jam-site.

A very important message about taking breaks and taking care of yourself was at the heart of this jam. This is something I generally focus on with our Galway Game Jams, so we were delighted that this message was at the heart of the Global Game Jam 2020 Keynote.

You can check out the games made this year on the official page here: https://globalgamejam.org/2020/jam-sites/galway-ireland/games

If you have any questions give me a shout. For now I will be taking a day off to rest, and play some of these games again!

Big thanks to Galway Film Centre for supporting us, without their help we would not have been able to provide free entry!

Thanks to GamerFest for supplying prizes for our People’s Choice award and sharing our event on social media!

Thanks to Andrew in Seattle for assisting with the cross-site collaboration experiment, as well as the awesome team that made it work!

I’ll remember this one for a long time – really positive athmosphere with a bunch of chilled out people all foccussed on their projects with a drive to get things done.