A few months ago, the “One Game A Month” (#1GAM) challenge was first announced. As the name suggests, the challenge consists of developing one game every month and to submit it to the #1GAM webpage. The challenge has been most successful, as more than a thousand games from competitors throughout the world have been uploaded. Amongst the competitors are Abengoshis (Alex Saye) and OxyOxspring (Sean Oxspring), who are currently studying Games Computing at the University of Lincoln. In a recent online chat, they were keen on discussing their #1GAM experiences.
“#1GAM inspires people and promotes the creation of games” says Alex, “The challenge strongly encourages developing, finishing and releasing great games. There aren’t really any rules, so it ties perfectly with other game jams.” Alex is currently a first year Games Computing student and has submitted a handful of games to the competition. “The challenge doesn’t force you to work on each game for exactly a month, you can release as many as you want in whatever time frame you want – the point is just to get people making more games. #1GAM is more of a target than a game jam.”
Sean is currently in the final stages of his BSc Games Computing course. “It is interesting”, says Sean, when asked about what he thinks of the #1GAM challenge, “It requires people to be really self-motivated which is not always easy. But if you can drive yourself to submit those games, then you have really accomplished something amazing. You can also meet a lot of developers, learn a lot, make full games, get them played by many people.”
Feel free to have a peek at Alex’s games and Sean’s submissions. Below is a video about Alex’s most recent submission dubbed “A Game about Squares”. Are you currently working on a #1GAM submission? What do you think of Sean’s and Alex’s submissions? Feel free to comment below!