SemesterGamJam – Battle of Iga
From Friday, June 15th to Sunday, June 17th 2018, we attended the SemesterGameJam.
Unlike last time, the Game Jam was a „Chill Edition“, so we had a variable group size and there was a special VR Challenge, in which we participated. The topic for the VR challenge was „one headset multiple players“.
The VR device was a Lenovo Mirage Solo, a stand alone headset with Daydream.
Peter and Aida joined us to created a game called „Battle of Iga“, where players can experience the fight between the last ninjas and Oda Nobunaga.
The idea was to let the VR player see the whole village and manipulate it and the normal players can walk around following the guidance of the VR player and shoot shuriken at the attacking samurai.
After one day of work, we had a functional game for the ninjas (the non-VR human players) with attacking samurais who walk through the village and try to destroy the tower in the center. In the video you can see the path of the samurai walking through the city.
But the VR version was not ready yet, the headset brought us headaches, beginning from the setup to the connection PC – device and much more.
The character animations also did not work quite as expected, so we had to create new, simpler characters.
In the end, we had to discard the idea of the VR player giving guidance to the ninjas.
Instead, we just implemented a split screen mode for two players on the same device.
You can download Battle of Iga right here, grab a friend and make sure you have a game controller (we tested it with a PS4 controller).
Download Battle of Iga for macOS (We will upload a Windows version if requested)
Summarized, the game jam was a great experience! We learned a lot from each other and had the chance to implement a working game in 42 hours.
We look forward to the next SemesterGameJam in December!