London Met’s Game Programming and Games Animation teams took part in an all-day Game Jam with a folk tale theme, as part of the Imagine-If Festival.  They chose stories from Germany, Lithuania, Greece, Holland, Cameroon, Arabia, Brazil and Japan.

The Imagine-If Festival is held from 1-4 March to celebrate the legacy of educationalist Sir Ken Robinson, who championed diversity of talent and valued imagination as the force enabling us to change our world.

Submissions – https://itch.io/jam/imagine-if-you-were-in-a-folk-tale/entries

Image courtesy Paul James

This year we changed the location of our annual School Summer Show to the new Roding Building.  As usual, we had an entertaining and productive few days – pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkmakeplay/albums/72157698691609155

Digital Toybox 2016 Summer Show trailer from Nigel Medhurst on Vimeo.

Team photo

Erik, Dimitri, Ana and Quoc worked tirelessly all weekend at this year’s Global Game Jam, hosted by Londonmet at Accelerator.  They were part of a team developing “A Clowny Day”, inspired by this year’s theme: RITUAL

http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/clowny-day

Tyanah leads Werewolf game

The jam kicked off on Friday evening with a keynote and the release of the secret theme, then some brainstorming and ice-breaking with Londonmet Computer Games Programming graduate Tyanah Graham, who reprised her role as Mistress of Werewolf.

Then it was down to business, as teams began to work on their ideas and settle in for a hard night of digital work.  Some of the jammers stayed overnight, sleeping on the floor – 48 hours to make a game requires a lot of stamina!

On Saturday, graduates Ashley Mackenzie and Chris Newsum visited the site to meet new students and talk about their careers since graduation.  Ashley is a lighting expert, currently working for Cloud Imperium Games while Chris works at Rocksteady Studios, doing game testing.

Chris and Ashley talk to Ana, Dimitri and Quoc

We also had a visit from Gorm Lai, one of the founders of the Global Game Jam, luckily captured on our twitch live stream…

The jam wound up on Sunday, when teams had to upload their final games to the GGJ site by 3pm.  We did some play-testing and a show-n-tell, hearing how everyone had approached the theme.  With over 40 participants, it was a busy, exciting weekend and some awesome games were produced – check out all the GGJ games here: http://globalgamejam.org/2016/jam-sites/london-metropolitan-university/games

Programmers hard at work

Creating some art

In production

(http://galapagosconservation.org.uk/event_listings/re-discovering-galapagos-day/)

The students designed and developed a 3D Tortoise Tracking game over the summer, which will be part of an educational package delivered to school children in the Galapagos and Key Stage 2 and 3 children in UK, helping them to learn about conservation in the islands.

The Tortoise Tracking game was a real hit at the event, attracting many members of the public.  In the game, players take the role of a conservationist dealing with environmental hazards that prevent tortoises migrating in order to lay eggs.

The project was initially conceived by Dan Wright and Jen Jones from the Galapagos Conservation Trust, with advice from Dr Stephen Blake from the Galapagos TortoiseMovement Ecology Programme.

The team on Monday morning

Zion Siton, Alex Owen, Ashrakur Rahman, Michal Chmielewski and Andrew Braid – this year’s Londonmet team at the Brains Eden 48 hour Gamejam at Anglia Ruskin University, July 2014.  The team developed “Scramble”, writing their own physics engine in Actionscript.

48 hours later…

Icarus by Fergus Murphy

This year’s summer show will take place on 5/6 June 2014, in the Graduate Centre and Blue Met Lounge on Holloway Road.

We’ll finish with a flourish this year – our CLOSING PARTY is from 5-8pm on 6th June.

There is a Faculty Employer Network and Enterprise Day event taking place on the closing day on 6th June 10 am – 4:30 pm at the same venue. Registration on (industry14.eventbrite.com) is essential.

Londonmet team hit the Brains Eden Gamejam on 28th June, ready for 48 hours of designing and developing in Cambridge.  This year’s team was Max Morris, Marcus Oldfield, Alex Owen, Fergus Murphy and Harry Corke.

The theme was “mountains” and their game was “Dwarficide”, link to follow…

Follow the team’s progress at http://beardedbadger.com…

The annual summer show from students in the School of Computing, with a strong emphasis on games, media, mobile apps, electronic toys…
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/138718626323136/

Archives:
Digital Toybox 2012 flickr pix
Digital Toybox 2011 flickr pix