Overview

Schedule

Name Type Time Speaker
Godot Game Engine Workshop Workshop November 26, 2021 5:00 PM-6:00 PM Forest Anderson
Opening Keynote Jam November 26, 2021 6:00 PM-6:45 PM Forest, Connor
Jam Skills: Quick, Iterative Prototypes Talk November 26, 2021 8:00 PM-8:30 PM Connor Hillen
Day 1 Ends Jam November 26, 2021 10:00 PM  
Day 2 Starts Jam November 27, 2021 8:00 AM  
Open Source Game Development Fun Time November 27, 2021 9:00 AM-9:45 AM Forest Anderson
Production Skills for Game Jams Talk November 27, 2021 10:00 AM-10:30 AM Connor Hillen
Retro Repair Stream Fun Time November 27, 2021 11:00 AM-1:00 PM BITSoc
Exporting and Publishing Godot Games Workshop November 27, 2021 7:30 PM-8:00 PM Forest Anderson
Playtest Session! Fun Time November 27, 2021 8:00 PM  
Day 2 Ends Jam November 27, 2021 10:00 PM  
Day 3 Start Jam November 28, 2021 8:00 AM  
Submission Period! Jam November 28, 2021 3:00 PM-4:00 PM  
Local Industry Panel Talk November 28, 2021 4:30 PM-5:00 PM SkyPyre Studios, TBD
Closing Statements, Playtest Call Fun Time November 28, 2021 5:30 PM Forest Anderson, Connor Hillen

Optional Constraints

Your team may choose to follow these constraints! Consider them helpful tools to spark ideas, limit scope, or an extra challenge.

Category Name Description
Visuals 🔥Nitro Boost😎 The only sprites in your game are emoji.
Visuals Palette 404 Your game has at most 4 distinct colours.
Visuals Personification At least 3 assets come from pictures taken during the jam.
Development Data Scientist Your entire game is playable in a spreadsheet.
Development Web 3.0 Your game looks like a normal website, but looks are deceiving.
Sound Bleep Box All sounds were made by the team recording themselves.
Sound Recycle All sound effects are modifications of the same starting sound.
Gameplay 30 Seconds or Less Your game is played in at most 30 second sessions.
Gameplay Four Buttons Your game can be played with at most four inputs.

The Team, The Goals

LameJam is coordinated by a small group of volunteers from Ottawa, made up of of games enthusiasts, students, developers, instructors, and jammers. Our first event in 2018 was run with the assistance of the Carleton University School of Computer Science and the Carleton Computer Science Society, and is now being operated online for all to access!

Our goals with LameJam remain unchanged; we want to encourage people to create, to learn, and to have fun. While game jamming is a distinct skill from working in the games industry, it’s a fantastic outlet for creativity and a great way to meet people. We think everyone can learn to make games, and we want to invite folks that would otherwise avoid something like a game jam. There’s no competition here. There’s no expectations, and there’s no judgement. We want LameJam to be a game jam where you can feel comfortable trying something new, whether that’s trying a game jam at all or taking on a new role in jams.

With any success and luck, we hope to continue running this event anually and continuing to bring game development to new faces. By showing some support for LameJam, you will also be supporting future events relating to the local game scene!

What does LameJam look like?

With LameJam being online this year, the majority of the jam will take place on Discord. You can join the Discord server before the event, and sign up on Itch.io so that you can submit a game at the end. First you can choose to attend a game engine workshop and get a rough overview of how game engines work; even if you don’t intend to code, it’s still useful to know about the tech you’ll be using. Note: Non-digital games are fully allowed! Provide instructions and printables instead of game executables.

Then we will announce the theme. All game submissions should revolve around the theme in some way, but it is not restricted to any one definition. Feel free to interpret it however you like! We will go over the schedule for the weekend and give another chance for anyone to jump into teams. Feel free to organize teams before the jam on our Discord, but you can always keep an eye out for teams taking on new members. We highly encourage taking on new team mates and meeting some new people during the jam!

Once the theme is announced, it’s up to you! We will be hosting a variety of small talks throughout the weekend to teach game and jam skills, as well as a few more industry focused talks of interest to encourage taking breaks over the weekend. We strongly encourage healthy jam conditions; take breaks, get exercise, eat healthy, and wrap up your work day early enough to unwind and get a good night’s sleep. Sleep and relaxation are critical to your creativity and productivity through the weekend!

Ideally, you will have something which can be played by Saturday afternoon at the latest. It’s quite a tall order, so try to keep your game idea small! REALLY small! The goal is to get the game into other jammers hands early and make improvements over the weekend, not to just finish your initial idea at the last second. Of course, game jams can be unpredictable, so don’t feel bad if you don’t even have anything playable by the end of the weekend. That’s perfectly fine. We strongly encourage posting your game builds periodically through the weekend and asking for playtesters. We will have some specified times throughout where we encourage breaks and playtesting.

Finally, on Sunday, you can submit your game and we’ll break away into channels to do some playtesting. Try out each other’s games, realize it was a tough weekend for everyone, and don’t compare yourself to others - just appreciate the work they did, the work you did, and the great time you will have in your next game jam.

A rough outline of the weekend looks like the following:

  • Friday
    • Opening workshops on how to use game engines
    • Team formations
    • A welcome panel from the organizers going over the event
    • Theme announcement
    • Talks on jam skills
  • Saturday
    • Opening talks on jam skills
    • Mid-day talks to take a break on jam skills/industry interests
    • End of day Prototype Playtesting
  • Sunday
    • Opening talks
    • Finishing up work
    • End of day/midday closing talks
    • Show and tell!

More Info

Still not sure what a game jam is? Check out our page, “About Jams” for more information about game jams, sign up for our mailing list for further updates, or ask us some questions on Discord!