My First Global Game Jam - Making "Umbilicus"

What a weekend...

A week ago I accepted a job offer at Jumpdrive Studios, a new indie game company in Portland, OR.  In the same week I attended my first Global Game Jam event.  We actually sponsored the Portland's GGJ site at the Art Institute with PIGsquad - and used the oppotunity to introduce ourselves and support the awesome indie game community growing in Oregon.  Friday night was technically our first public appearance, where we announced the launch of our new company, and our first project: XO, to the local community of game-makers and game-enthusiasts. 

There were over 100 jammers on site, all bringing their own talent and ideas to the table one-by-one. After each rapid-fire introduction, everyone started forming into groups for the weekend.  I teamed up with Justin Baldwin and Yori Kvitchko from SleepNinja Games (another indie game studio right here in Portland) and Andrew Pomeroy.  

We were up past 5am on Saturday night, and the result was a 2-4 player co-op game called Umbilicus: Descent Team Delta.  I headed the music and SFX for the game, using LSDJ in a modded Gameboy DMG and some software instruments in Logic Pro.  Most of the sounds we created in BFXR (a great free application to create quick, 8-bit sounds) and did a little voice-acting while applying some heavy bitcrushing plug-ins to give it that Genesis era vibe.  You can download it free on the Global Game Jam site, along with all the other great games made over the weekend. (I would highly recommend checking out Shitty Voltron and He & Us)

- Corey: @coreywarning

Photo credit: Ben Snortum
See more here