48hr Game Making Challenge 2009 - 5 minutes to go!

News from Matt - Sunday, 04 October 2009 @ 4:59pm

With less than 5 minutes to go in the 48 Hour Game Making Competition the contestants are getting a bit frantic. There's a lot of happy but tired people, but additionally there are a lot of people who are a bit grumpy and wanted me to be dead as I wandered around and pestered them and took photos of their work while they tried to not lose a competition.

Loking at peoples screens has mostly shown inexplicable thing in Visual Studio or some sort of 3D modelling program, or Photoshop being used to polish up backgrounds or game art. But a couple of people have been running gameplay tests, and those are what get particularly interesting to watch.

I've been particularly interested by three groups. Team "Mudkips Do It Better" had an intriguing title happening which uses a series of attractors and repulsors that create a path for a neverending spray of spaceships that need to get into a warp thingy. The version I saw was lacking in background images or music, but it still looked really fascinating.

As a contrast to that, Black Wolf Games had a simple competitive platform game, where two girls jump up clouds, and can attack each other on the way. The gameplay looked fun but simple, but the maing thing that made it stand out was that the art was very stylised and polished and interesting.

Finally there was Team Kidbrain, whose game (which I've decided to entitle "THING WITH A BEE") looks freaking awesome if you happen to like yellow. Which I do.

I'm looking forward to seeing the other games after the disparate elements are put together and some fo the awesome art I've seen while walking around ends up as part of a game.

The other thing I'm really looking forward to checking out is the Pro Team entries. There is a category for Professional teams now, and that forces them to stand apart and work to a higher level. Whether they'll be up to the standard will be a fascinating question. Can these talented students and enthusiasts create something to rival experienced veterans of the industry?

Only 5 minutes before we find out the answer to that question.

More importantly, we're going to be giving away a prize for the best logo! For no particular reason. I want to thank the lovely John Passfield for donating some awesome prizes for us to give away from this, including an Ape Escape plushy, a Super Monkey Ball inflatable armband (seriously), Mr Driller facecloth, and some Kingdom Hearts keychains.

These are the sort of prizes that lesser sites like Kotaku and PALGN only dream of being able to offer.