Eric Scott and Team Boom win the NY - Columbia Global Game Jam.

02/04/2009

After 48 grueling hours of design, rapid prototyping, and development powered by caffeine, pizza, and very little sleep, the four person "Team Boom" wins the NY - Columbia Global Game Jam.

The 2009 Global Game Jam was held in 53 locations all over the world with the goal of pushing the envelope of game design by taking total strangers, forming teams, and building a video game from scratch in 48 hours. The games were judged on originality, playability, funness, as well as the degree to which they followed the following constraints:

Theme: As long as we have each other, we will never run out of problems.
A full play session doesn't take longer than 5 minutes.
Incorporation of one of the following ideas:
- Illusionary
- Pointed
- Persistent

The winning entry, titled Gandhi Gandhi Boom Boom is a casual real time puzzle game where opposites like war and peace, happiness and sadness, and Gandhi and hamburgers are persistently drawn to each other but only at your peril.

Team Boom was comprised of:

Clement Linel - a recent Masters Graduate in computer science and lead programmer of Team Boom.
Eric Scott - Co-founder and CEO of Dolphin Micro Inc. and programmer of Team Boom
Rosanna Lopez - Graduate Student at Columbia's Teacher's College in International Education Development and art and design for Team Boom
Traci Lawson - digital media specialist with the Sesame Workshop and art, design, and sound for Team Boom

Other notable entries

"What Is, Is Not" - A surreal side scroller focused on interacting with both the negative and positive spaces of the levels
"Klish" - A cool puzzle game with fantastic graphics and sound
"Are We There Yet" - A whimsical collection of mini-games based around a road trip with your sibling.
"Din" - A unique and humorous audio recognition game where conversation takes center stage.

To see all the games and read more about the event, you can visit the 2009 Global Game Jam site at: www.globalgamejam.org