Students created games in 48 hours at Oct. 23-25 Game Jam

Budding student video game developers from universities across the nation gathered Oct. 23-25, 2015 on the Texas A&M campus for “ [Chillennium] (http://chillennium.com/index.html) ,” a 48-hour video game-building competition, or “ [game jam] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_jam) ” hosted by the Department of Visualization’s [Learning Interactive Visualization Experience Lab] (http://live.viz.tamu.edu/) .

The around-the-clock event, staged at Texas A&M's [Hildebrand Equine Complex] (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hildebrand+Equine+Complex/@30.6152285,-96.3688248,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x8646825219b8cda9:0xbe524b107003fbfd) , culminated with awards from Chillennium sponsors for the best games created.

The event's top prize went to students who developed “Winning Circle" — Anne Lynch, a graduate visualization student, Kyle Purser, an undergraduate computer science student,  and Justin Steptoe, a business student.

It was the second successful game jam hosted by the LIVE Lab.

“Game Jams are a way for game designers, artists, programmers, and enthusiasts to learn more about games and game production, explore new ideas or concepts, or just have a blast making games,” said André Thomas an award-winning game developer and LIVE Lab founder who now teaches game development at Texas A&M.

The contest began with the introduction of the game jam theme. Then, working alone or in teams limited to four members, contestants created one or more desktop games using the software of their choice. Throughout the two-day, non-stop competition industry professionals roamed the game jam floor, offering contestants game development advice and networking opportunities.

At the conclusion Oct. 25 of the game development period, three groups — professional game developers, event sponsors and a select group of young gamers at least ten years old — played and ranked  the games in a variety of categories including innovation, quality, completeness, design, and sound.

Prizes for overall game performance were awarded to the three highest scoring teams, and additional prizes went to the teams with the highest individual scores in select categories, such as art, programming and sound.