intraHouse recently had the pleasure of sponsoring the Gran Canaria edition of Ludum Dare – a global event for the creation of video games – and as intraHouse was a sponsor, a member of the Gran Canaria team was invited to go and I jumped at the chance!
My name is Óscar and I work at intraHouse as mobile developer. I’m not a game developer, but there’s much to be learnt from game development and working with people with different areas of expertise, that can be brought into our work at intraHouse. Such events are a great source of inspiration for us.
For the Gran Canaria event, we were 60 people with different backgrounds – some game developers, some general programmers, designers and musicians – and the objective was to create a video game from scratch in just 72 hours working as part of a team. There were 10 teams in total, all with the same game theme of ‘you are a monster’ and the results were quite amazing.
Working with such a talented and diverse team with a passion for video games was a lot of fun. For me the most rewarding aspect was gelling fast as part of a diverse team and working under pressure, as part of a competition, to produce something we could be proud of.
And that’s the magic of Ludum Dare for me. Although all participants share a passion for video games, we all come from different backgrounds and professions and so the input of creativity and ideas was exhilarating, plus I got to learn about some new tools and libraries.
Although it was a competition there was no official prize, but at the closing ceremony, we shared our video games and most people agreed that the “Notzilla” game was the best because it has great art and is easy and fun to play as a mini-game. The team even gave the monster theme a new spin, and they turned it into something comic: a dinosaur that sells ice cream!
You can view the results here: