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Originally Posted by Gamasutra
The Indie Game Jam
The third annual Indie Game Jam, introduced by game designer Chris Hecker, kicked the workshop off on a high note. Each year at the Jam, developers make as many innovative games as possible during a four day period using a custom game engine made specifically for the event. The engine is always built around a single technology focus, and this year's focus was gameplay physics. The Game Jam challenge: to create 2D games in which physics drives gameplay.
Here is some of what the team of pro and indie game developers came up with.
* Wasps. This game takes place inside a skull-shaped arena, and features two wasps trying to scoop up a sea of small objects that behave like a fluid. The goal is to deposit as many of them as possible into the "eyes" of the skull.
* Spaceships. In this side-scrolling shooter, a player's spaceship ejects "mass" to move forward, while struggling against the backward pull of an enormous black hole. Enemies and obstacles respond physically to a variety of weapons -- meaning that a well-placed ammo burst can push a pesky asteroid right of the way.
* Boot Looter. This game seems at first like a platform jumper, akin to Lode Runner -- but these platforms and ladders shift and move under the weight of the character. The goal is to reach the top of the screen before the entire level collapses beneath you.
* Spider. A two-player game in which players control spiders moving around a web. The web itself is subject to physical change: players can cut the web, spin new webs, and alter the shape of the web via their spider's motion.
* Checker's Hopper. The player controls a miniature pogo stick, capable of bouncing up and down while leaning from side to side, to create angled trajectories. Any block with which the hopper comes into contact is given torque and momentum, meaing the entire environment is an interactive physics simulation.
* Stunt Hamsters. In this game, the player controls a hamster cannon, and must use the explosive properties of the hamsters to achieve a goal. In the demo, a player fired several dozen squeaking hamsters into a depression next to a rock, then shot another hamster through a ring of fire so as to ignite the hamsters and blast the rock out of the way of the goal.
* Pig Plow. A physics-based pig plowing game. In addition to manipulating a plow to scoop pigs into a net, a player can change the abilities of his or her plow by collecting physics-based power-ups.
* Spirograph. An art toy more than a game, in which a player manipulates a boomerang to create aesthetically pleasing on-screen designs.
* Yoga. The goal here is to keep a paper cut-out of Yoga master BKS Iyengar balanced in his various yoga poses.
* Dancing Shrimp. In this game, the environment responds to the game's music, and the player movies a dynamically-controlled shrimp within that environment. There's no object per se, but it's interesting to see what happens when the beat stops and gravity becomes zero.
* Orange Planter. Possibly the most aesthetically interesting of this year's Jam games, this game features tiny characters who live in a physically simulated tree. The object is to use the characters' motion to sway the tree from side to side, and then when the tree is close enough to the ground, to pick up oranges and feed them into the receptors at the top of the tree. A successfully planted orange yields a beautiful burst of color and sound.
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