The global game Jam has started in Newport! Follow our adventures through the next 43 hours on the live stream above (I’m probably on the far left, in the hat, almost certainly doing something stupid), and via my Twitter feed. You can send us messages through Twitter too! And we’ll read them!

If you’re working hard at another jam site, good luck and have fun!

This weekend, there are no less than THREE indie game jams going on simultaneously, and guess what? I’ll be doing my darndest to enter all three.

This week sees the Experimental Gameplay Project (1-31 Dec, theme: “Drawing”), Game Prototype Challenge (13-20 Dec, theme: “Immortality” and “Thin Ice”) and Ludum Dare 19 (18-20 Dec GMT, unknown theme) coinciding in the same 48-hour period. Making one game to fit all of them in two days can’t be that hard, can it?

Credit to Chris Kaitila (Breakdance McFunkyPants) for getting this idea into my head. If I die during this, it’s his fault!

For the last month, Alec Stamos of Ultimate-Nerds.com and I have been locked in an epic game-development battle for indie honour.

• The contest ran from 5th-30th November.
• Only 30 hours were allowed to be spent on anything going directly into the game.
• Publicly licensed materials (graphics, sound, code libraries, etc.) were allowed, as long as they were declared in a readme file with the game.
• No bleeding on the furniture.

The development stage is over, but now I need you! Voting has begun to find November’s winner!

How do I Get the Games and Vote?

Go to the game announcement posts on IndieKombat.com to download both games: About Turn (my game) and, if you must, Ninja Art Game (Alec’s game). If then you think my game’s the best, vote for me in the poll on the right-hand side of the page! If you like Alec’s game better, erm… there’s no need to vote. Your votes really do count - as I write this, there are only 2 votes between us! The winner will be announced at the end of December.

I’ll be continuing to work on my game, adding more levels and gameplay elements, and generally making it better. You can track the ongoing development now at Indie DB or Mod DB.

PIXELSPACE is finished and can be downloaded now for free at dcfgames.com/games/pixelspace!

You play as a white pixel defending yourself against incoming infected green pixels. You do this by shooting them down or by guiding them to crash into each other (the latter having the chance of an ammo drop, hence “enemies as weapons”). Coming into contact with enemies will cause damage, but you have the ability to regenerate health at a rate determined by your accuracy with your weapons.

For all my updates from throughout Ludum Dare 18, see my Twitter feed (#ld48 tag), the Ludum Dare entry page and the dcf Games blog LD18 tag. To see all the games from the event, click here.

A few screenshots of the finished game before I head off to bed!

The first screenshot of my Ludum Dare 18 entry. The player plays as the white pixel firing on the incoming infected green pixels. Ammo is limited, so the player must use the homing tendencies of the green pixels to cause them to crash into each other, producing an ammo crate containing 100 bullets and killing both involved.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ll already know I’m taking part in the Ludum Dare 48-hour game development competition this weekend.

My game idea is a basic top-down shooter, with different enemies having different effects on the enviroment when they are shot. The player has a very limited ammo supply, so use of these effects is vital to survive. The player can also lure enemies into colliding with one another to kill them.

It’s the start of sunny day 2 with 16 hours to go, so here’s a sitrep…

• Particle system is up and running
• Player movement working
• Enemy spawning working

Now I just need to add the ability to shoot, collision detection for the enemies and the various environmental hazards… I’d better get to work!

More news to come throughout the day.