Gamertell

Back in the day, video games were primarily homebrew creations, programmed by a single person who just wanted to share a bit of fun. Now it can literally take years to create a video game from scratch an involve a staff that reads like feature film credits.

In a throwback to those early days of gaming, students at Ohio University were challenged to develop their own amateur video game in less than 24 hours. Yep, one whole sleepless day to create a video game - not compete in a video game - based on the theme “nature and technology.” The challenge, dubbed the Ohio Game Jam, took place on March 31, 2007, had 17 competitors that made up six teams from three schools.

All the teams completed a game before the deadline, with a little time to spare for testing. The winning game, I Can’t Breathe, was completed in two hours. Three games tied for second place: Brows of the Martian Landscape, Zomborgs and Hydroponic Hyperbole. The games were created using either GameMaker, C++ or Flash.

The best part: You can download all the completed computer games as PC (Windows and Mac) executable files at the Ohio Game Jam web site.

Here’re a few interesting stats listed on the site about the competition on the site:

• Total number of participants: 19
• Number of development groups: 6
• Number of working games created: 7
• Number of groups that failed to produce a game: 0
• Pizzas consumed: 12
• Caffeine consumed: Too much to measure!

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