We recently participated at the SemesterGameJam, the topic was „Discovery“.
This semester, we decided to just work together, without a team.

Together, we created the game LabDay.
You are a scientist who has to make money, so you buy half filled test tubes and mix them together.
If the result is not as valuable as expected, you can still put it in the fridge or at the fire.
Hopefully, your mix is valuable enough to sell it.
But don’t drop your creations on the floor!

The game was displayed at the end of the game jam and did not only convince our fellow students but also the jury!
Finally, we reached the 4th place from 23 participating teams.

We are really happy with this result and did not expect such a great feedback from the players!

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!

Finally, twonodes.games is online and visible for the world wide web!

We decided to spin up a website to showcase our previous, current and future projects and to tell you from time to time some thoughts about game development and how this technology can be used in a various field of societies.

So, we are pleased that you are visiting our website, take a look at our projects, like us on Facebook or write to us, we love to hear from you!

– Beate & John