Game Jams are already not for the faint of heart, requiring maximum work, no rests from a group of developers over however much time to create something from scratch. The Finns have decided that isn’t hardcore enough and, as part of the Global Game Jam running Jan 29th through 31st, will be packing 20 game developers off to an isolated cabin in the woods. There they’ll contend with being immortally cold, probably quite smelly and miles from the nearest living thing that knows what a videogame is while they try to create just that.
Game jams are the home of the best free games you could ask for.
In fact, the one luxury in what will be a packed cabin is, because it’s Finland, a sauna. They won’t even have internet, so I hope they weren’t planning on using an unfamiliar codebase for their adventure.
In total, six game development companies from the country will be, er, ‘donating’ their employees to the cause.Seriously, Kuuasema, Frogmind Games, Mindfield Games, Moido Games, and V2.fi will all find their workers a little more hardy come February, we expect. A company called Lapland Safaris are helping to set it up and, we hope, keep everyone safe.
They’ll also have to create a game in that time, and seeing exactly what they manage to make should be interesting. At the same time, tens of thousands of others around the globe will take part in the annual event to make some cool, short games and inspire new ideas. We doubt any of them are going to have as hard a go of it as this lot.