Pocket Jam #4

Posted on 18.9.2019 by Anna Permala

Pocket Games Connects Conference returns to Helsinki on 1-2 October 2019, and so does Pocket Jam! The Pocket Jam is run now for the fourth time at the heart of the conference, and while the setting is ideal for making a mobile game, you can always choose your own platform and technology.

Pocket Gamer Connects is Europe’s biggest mobile games conference with developers, investors and other industry experts from all over the world, as well as fringe events like indie demo expo and pitching. Due to the event’s huge success it will move to a new venue in 2019! PGC Helsinki will take over The Cable Factory in Ruoholahti.

Tickets are now available in Eventbrite! You can find the tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pocket-jam-4-tickets-72148170119

The participants will receive full access to the conference program, expo and networking events plus all the other benefits that come with the conference ticket and a seat to jam.

In addition the participants who finish and upload their game according to the deadline will have a chance to win a ticket to the PGC London in January 2020, and a chance to present their game there. All uploading teams will be also automatically considered as candidates of the Finnish Game Jam Awards 2019.

See you there!

Pocket Jam #4
1-2 October 2019
Kaapelitehdas, Helsinki
#pocketjam4

Pocket Gamer Connects is Europe’s biggest mobile games conference. PGC Helsinki is one of the several PGC events held during 2019. All of these events provide value to a wide range of industry players, from global corporations looking to hone their strategy, down to indie developers seeking a little inspiration and new contacts.
Website: https://www.pgconnects.com/helsinki/

The Cable Factory (Kaapelitehdas) is the largest cultural centre in Finland. It houses 3 museums, 10 galleries, dance theatres, art schools, artists, bands and companies. Around 900 people work at the Cable Factory on a daily basis, and each year nearly 340,000 people attend special events.
Website:https://www.kaapelitehdas.fi/en/info

ASM Game Jam ‘19 Report

Posted on 9.8.2019 by Anna Permala

The biggest weekend of summer is now behind us. On August 1-4 Messukeskus was again the stage for one of the biggest demo parties and computer festivals in the world, Assembly Summer, and within Assembly, as usual, was the ASM Game Jam ‘19.

The location was as inspiring as ever! The jammers were able to attend the entire event, and see the demo scene competitions and esports trounaments in the middle of jamming. We had over 40 participants, and 9 games were made in total, including one AR game, one card game and one Game Boy game!

The jam ran from Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning, and despite all the distractions the jammers managed to develop amazing games once again. This year the theme was tradeoff, and and many teams implemented a mechanic where players have to decide between equally impactful resources or actions.

Immersal provided their Augmented Reality development kit for the jammers to use, and one team took up the challenge. In Bon Appetit you fight flying croissants that appear on the phone screen. Immersal also sponsored pizzas for the hungry jammers on Saturday!

Check Immersal’s website to learn more about them and the SDK: https://immersal.com/

Just like last year, we set up the voice acting on two days to record audio for the jam games. Anyone could come and record lines requested by jammers. Assembly visitors turned out to be great voice actors, we recorded many excellent evil laughters!

If you want to play the jam games, you can find all of them here: https://itch.io/jam/asm-game-jam-2019/entries

Thank you for a great event, and see you at ASM Game Jam 2020!

Scholarship to Slavic Game Jam 2019

Posted on 8.7.2019 by Anna Permala

The Finnish Game Jam (FGJ) is sending Adelina Lintuluoto to the Slavic Game Jam in Warsaw as part of the FGJ’s Scholarship Program. Lintuluoto is a physics student at the University of Helsinki and has always enjoyed being creative. She recently found an outlet for that in game development and has jammed by programming in both Unity and Godot engines, while helping out with pixel art and story writing. She has participated at the Global Game Jam in 2018 at FGJ’s Arabia site and in 2019 in Geneva Switzerland. She has also jammed at Quantum Wheel 2019 and volunteered at Jam Jam Festival 2019.

The scholarship includes a ticket to the event and a 200 EUR travel stipend.

The FGJ Scholarship Program was created to help Finnish jammers to travel to international game jams to promote the Finnish jamming scene, share jamming culture and promote international cooperation.

For more information on FGJ and our scholarship program visit: https://www.finnishgamejam.com/scholarships/

Slavic Game Jam (SGJ) is a game jam in Warsaw, Poland, organized for the 5th time in 2019. Last year SGJ had over 200 participants, and the total number of games developed at all previous events combined is over 250.
Website: https://slavicgamejam.org/

Isolated in Iceland

Posted on 29.6.2019 by Anna Permala

Text and photos by Samuli Jääskeläinen

Sixth Isolation Jam was held June from 5th to 9th in Laxahvammur fishing lodge, middle of nowhere, Iceland. I was there with 13 other jammers to jam and have fun for a weekend. We were also joined by Subpixel Team who were filming a documentary about the jam. The documentary should be out in a couple of months, keep tuned! Jam produced a handful of games, you can see some of them here. Submitting the project was voluntary and working on personal projects was allowed, so not everything that was produced during the jam is at the Itch page.

The jam didn’t have a theme, but the extreme nature around us and the isolated jamming environment were encouraged to be used as a source of inspiration. Jóhannes, the organizer of the jam, is a sheep farmer and we got to pet his sheep and newborn lambs on one evening. You can see sheep as an indirect theme as the jam as most games featured them in some shape of form. We also did a small hike on the fields before starting the jam. The weather was really nice, the wind was strong, as it always is in Iceland, but the sun was shining warmly. We really lucked on the weather for the weekend!

Our team made a pocket sized ram adventure, Woolball’s backyard, during the weekend. I wrote the game logic and Sofi Kurtti organized the pixels on the screen into nice shapes. Our goal was to try out zgb, a game engine for the original Game boy. The game turned out really well and we had fun tossing our Game boy during the development to other jammers to get some quick playtesting in. The lodge also had a lan setup of three original Xboxes for nightly Halo 2 battles after each jamming day. So obviously we also put the game on a game boy emulator on Xboxes and played it on the big screen after it was done!

I’ve jammed around the world on various different game jams. Isolation was definitely one of the more memorable jams I’ve had the pleasure to attend. The relaxing atmosphere, inspiring locations and fun people made it an awesome weekend. All the non-jamming related activities gave nice breaks to coding, but didn’t divert too much to affect productivity. Iceland is an interesting country and every time I visit there I learn more how horribly ruthless nature there is. All the people jamming were great, it was nice to catch up with some distant old friends and make new jammer buddies!

Isolation Jam will happen next year one again. Follow Kollafoss Game Farm for further information. The space is limited, so be quick to apply when registration opens!

Let us know if you are traveling to an interesting game jam somewhere in the world – we would be happy to host a story of it at Finnishgamejam.com!

Jam Jam Festival was bigger than ever!

Posted on 20.6.2019 by Anna Permala

Third international Jam Jam Festival 2019 gathered jam organizers from all over the world to the forests of Sappee, Finland, to network, share ideas and relax in good company. This year was the biggest Jam Jam ever with almost 80 participants!

The Seminar Day offered talks from jammers and game jam organizers from all over the world: Finland, India, Romania, UK, Poland, Estonia, USA and Denmark.

Keynote speaker Yadu Rajiv from Bangalore, India, talked about the game jamming and game development communities and in India. Jupiter Hadley, the founder of indiegamejams.com, talked about her journey trying to play and document as many indie games as she can.

The full Seminar Day schedule was as follows:

Keynote: Yadu Rajiv: Game Jams in India – Our Story So Far
Kacper Domański: Game Jams of Poland
Mathias Jensen: More than a Jam: Nordic Game Jam’s Evolution
Chris Filip: Learning to Let Go
Johanna Summers: 47 to 47,000 – Managing Community Events on a Global Scale
Sebastian Laitila: Using Service Design in Hackathons and Game Jams
Licia Prehn: Jamming With Blind People and Being Nice
Jupiter Hadley: Trying To Document All the Game Jam Games
Julia Rässa: Love Is Tested… and Debugged!
Elie Abraham: How Jamming Saved/Ruined My Life

In addition to the seminars on Saturday, the Sunday was filled with workshops that any participant could organize. The workshop themes ranged from jam stories to making pancakes to jamming an entire song.

Naturally there was also a game jam! Henri Sarasvirta hosted a 1 hour game jam in one of the cottages. The theme world tries dilation was randomly generated. A total of 11 games were made! You can find and download all of them in itch.io: https://itch.io/jam/jam-jam-1h-jam-2

Thank you for an amazing event, and see you at Jam Jam Festival 2020!

Jam Jam 7-9 June 2019

Posted on 30.5.2019 by Anna Permala

It’s soon time for the third international Jam Jam Festival! The festival is held in the beginning of June in a cozy summer cottage environment. We are expecting more than 70 visitors this year!

Jam Jam is a festival and retreat for game jam organizers and anyone interested in learning, discussing and sharing ideas on game jams. Jam Jam 2019 is organized by the Finnish Game Jam and located in the middle of a Finnish forest, on a mountain called Sappeenvuori – only around 2h car ride from Helsinki.

The event consists of a one-day seminar with talks on game jams and jam games and one day of retreat. On the seminar day visitors can attend talks by many interesting game industry speakers. We have speakers from Finland, India, UK, Poland and Romania joining the Jam Jam this year!

On the retreat day you can decide what you work on – bring your jam organizing team and work with planning or debriefing your jams or come without an agenda and talk with all other jam organizers and jam-organizers-to-be, brainstorming new jams and sharing lessons on organizing events.

The venue is on top of the mountain Sappeenvuori, surrounded by beautiful Finnish nature and the power of the midnight sun of the Northern summer. The lodgings consist of eight well-equipped cabins with saunas and hot tubs.

Registration to the event is open! We have different ticket types, you can choose whichever best suits your needs. You can join for one day or the full weekend!
Tickets are on sale in Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jam-jam-2019-tickets-56827437395

The event website is open! You can visit it here: https://www.finnishgamejam.com/jamjam
You can also follow us on social media to get the updates right away.

We are looking forward to jam jams with you!

Jam Jam Festival
7-9 June 2019
#jamjam #jamjam19
Sappee, Pälkäne
https://www.sappee.fi/fi

Scholarship to Nordic Game Jam

Posted on 27.4.2019 by Anna Permala

The Finnish Game Jam has sent Antti Koponen to the Nordic Game Jam held in Copenhagen on April 25-28 2019 as part of the FGJ’s Scholarship Program.

Koponen is studying game development at Kajaani University of Applied Sciences and is passionate about making games and jamming. He is a multifaceted developer having jammed in various roles including 3D artist, UI artist, sound designer, and game designer. He has solo jammed from home at Ludum Dares 40-43, participated at a number of jams at Kajaani University as well as Museo Game Jam and the Global Game Jam organized by FGJ. The scholarship includes a ticket to the event and a 300€ travel stipend.

The FGJ Scholarship Program was created to help Finnish jammers to travel to international game jams to promote the Finnish jamming scene, share jamming culture and promote international cooperation.

For more information on FGJ and our scholarship program visit: https://www.finnishgamejam.com/scholarships

Nordic Game Jam is an annual game jam held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Over the years the event has grown from a classic 48 hours game jam to including two days of conference with talks, workshops, round tables and a pre-party. NGJ is one of the largest game jams in the world, with 900 participants as of 2016.
Website: https://www.nordicgamejam.com

Quantum Wheel Report

Posted on 1.4.2019 by Anna Permala

Quantum Wheel, a game jam about quantum technology, was held in the heart of frozen Helsinki in February 15-17. The event was first of its kind, bringing independent game developers and physicists under one roof to innovate a union of games and quantum computing.

Finnish Game Jam is no stranger to quantum theory, having organized already four Quantum Game Jams in the past. Physicists have been invited to jam since the very first event, and for a couple of years jammers have had access to Quantum Black Box, a tool developed at the University of Turku. Quantum Wheel was the first event organized in collaboration with IBM as well as the first event to provide jammers with the IBM quantum computer Q Experience.

During the weekend Allas Sea Pool was inhabited by over 50 participants who made 10 games, all utilising quantum technologies in one way or another. The theme for the jam was “noise in the wheel”. The theme was inspired by the eponymous SkyWheel, where teams spent some time jamming above the city.

One team took a step further, bringing quantum computing into physical world. They designed a card game that teaches players how to program on a quantum computer, and an actual quantum computer will also decide who wins the game.

Quantum Wheel garnered international interest as well, and Wired UK wrote an article featuring the event. You can read it here: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/quantum-game-jam-finland-helsinki

Make sure to try the games, all of them are available at Itch.io: https://itch.io/jam/quantum-wheel

Here you can read more about IBM’s Q Experience:
https://www.research.ibm.com/ibm-q/

Thank you for everyone for an amazing and unique event!

Quantum Wheel 15-17 Feb 2019

Posted on 12.2.2019 by Anna Permala

We are proud to have a new exciting jam in February 2019!

Quantum Wheel is a three day game jam at the heart of Helsinki aimed at creating games based on Quantum Physics, both for education and research.

The event continues the Quantum Game Jam series, and it is a collaboration with quantum physicists from the University of Turku, Aalto University and from IBM Zurich, who will participate in the jam. The list of participants includes also many experienced game developers and jammers from Finland and around the globe.

In this jam, the participants create games that utilize Quantum Black Box (tool developed at the University of Turku) and/or IBM quantum computer Q Experience. Otherwise the teams are free to choose their games’ directions and technologies used.

The jam will have around 50 participants and will be located at the cozy Sea Allas Pool in the center of Helsinki. Additional inspiration for the jam will be extracted from riding the SkyWheel Helsinki!

The website is open, go see it here: http://www.quantumgamejam.com/quantumwheel/

Quantum Wheel
15-17 February 2019
Allas Sea Pool / SkyWheel Helsinki
Katajanokanlaituri 2
00160 Helsinki
Finland

Allas Sea Pool is a gardenlike oasis in the heart of Helsinki with a large pool area and magnificent saunas. In addition to swimming, bathing in the saunas and good food, Allas Sea Pool offers many options for wellness. Spending a perfect day at Allas means relaxing, lingering, enjoying with all senses, both the body and the mind – in the middle of Helsinki, next to the Market square, every day of the year.
Website: https://www.allasseapool.fi/en/

SkyWheel Helsinki is an Observation Wheel is situated in Katajanokka, one of the most beautiful locations in Helsinki, right next to the market square. From 40 meters high you may see over the city, sea and surrounding islands.
Website: http://www.skywheel.fi/en/