Hello folks, anyone is attending this year Global Game Jam? I am planning to develop with my brother something very simple using LibGDX (probably Unity kids will kick our ass, but I do not care I will do Java for fun :P). Would be nice to share and discuss the games made by the community during this event.
I wanted to but the one in my city is booked out. Bummer.
Good luck with your game. So cool to do it with your brother. Will be interested to hear your experience
I wish I could, as I have moved to a city where this is happening now, but got other important stuff to attend to. Had a close friend’s wedding.
Thanks, finally I got him up for something. He codes, but only when he is paid for, he likes games, but mostly playing them. So maybe it will be a good opportunity to get him on the dark side 
Just remind them that the best selling Steam game last year was written using LibGDX. 
So the Jam is over and I wanted to share a bit of my experience
I have a bit mixed feelings about this one, on one side I accomplished what I wanted - making a game in 48 hours, on another hand, an objective of finding an artist for life-time collaboration was totally failed. I will mention some good points and those I did not like that much (note everything I say is strictly personal opinion and experience, so those of you who joined or might join the next year for sure will appreciate the event differently).
Let’s start with the good parts:
- You have a chance to speak with other people during the event, learn from them, discuss ideas and share experience
- There were solo jammers (not many) so you can set up your team or join someone else to collaborate on the project
- We had a gaming corner where you could play board and console games to relax after long coding sessions
- Very nice and helpful people, bother from organizational side, but also participants were quite willing to offer some tips and quick help
Now what I did not like
- Wooden chairs! I feel for my back…
- Food… Vegan food for 3 days in a row is definitely too much for me (I do understand that this was done to make the logistics more simple, but still it was depressing for me)
- Coffee… We constantly were lacking coffee, especially on the second and third days
- Networking event, where solo people were supposed to team up was a mess. I left a recommendation to create a page where people beforehand could describe very vaguely (because the topic is not known in advance) what they plan to do and whom they need, so solo guys could have a chance to check beforehand for interesting projects
- This is probably a very personal one, since I am really bad in selling things, but once people who I approached during networking event heard the word Java and pixelart they were turning away almost immediately. Everyone seemed interested only in Unity/Unreal Engine and 3D games
- Lack of talks and maybe knowledge sharing sessions
So to sum up, in general I had a lot of fun attending this event. I have realized that I am getting a bit old for this, 48 hours sessions is an impossible marathon to me. On Friday I came directly from work and stayed awake until ~3:00, Saturday I woke up at ~7:30, but at 22:00 my batteries died (still managed to code until ~1:00), Sunday I woke up at ~9:00 and continued coding until 17:00. I remember 5-6 years ago I would easily (well with lots of coffee) stay for the whole 48 hours awake (I attended similar events in the past). Nevertheless, the game was assembled together, we did not manage to find unfortunately an artist, so had to use the assets which were at hand, there it might look a bit inconsistent and ugly.
Check the link here, you both compile from sources (it is a LibGDX project) or run the installer. Note that the code is mess, during the first day I still tried to refactor, but at some point we had to stop with it, as it was eating too much of my time and constantly breaking code of my brother and the other guy (a student) who joined the team. For now I made GitHub repo private (I am looking for job, cannot show such code to people looking into my profile), but at some point I will either just open or refactor it so it is actually in presentable state.
https://globalgamejam.org/2020/games/tower-repairs-8
Thanks for the write up. I had a similar experience when I participated a few years ago.
Was a fun time, but without knowing anybody at the outset and working in different technologies such as unity, unreal, java and even one guy programming for windows phone which just came out, it’s difficult to work together. I think that pre-meeting skill sheet is a great idea, even if it’s just a warning to fringe coders like us that we have to learn unity!
If I was an artist I’d also go with Unity since learning that platform is a skill that you can take to most game dev houses. Even Blizzard use unity for Hearthstone apparently.
The game looks good for a 48 hour effort. I mashed all keys to discover that arrow keys move the lady and 1 and 2 repair towers and pick up wood. The game ran for a few waves then suddenly exited after a few minutes.
Achieving a functioning game with an objective and a release is mission accomplished so well done to you and the team. My attempt only made it to the prototype stage with no playable files released.
Where do you live now?
Thanks for feedback
Yeah the crash was introduced in the last hour 
and I did not have time to fix it (neither to balance the game properly) since the upload was taking forever and I was afraid of missing the deadline.
I was thinking for the next year to try assembling some remote team for GGJ, basically find some people beforehand, team up and use discord as communication channel. There is homework to be done a couple of month before to find people and make sure everyone gets in, but it might work.
I’m now living in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
So glad to hear your experience.