Time for the second part of the Global Game Jam Cologne 2012 Round Up (Part 1 here). The Global Game Jam was mandatory for the Students of Cologne Game Lab so as last year, we had some student projects. Perhaps the biggest and most polished one was Sequpes, a project made by a group of 6 CGL students.
Sequpes – Sounds like a sort of seafood.
Sequepes is actually a very simple idea. It’s a sequencer and Guitar Hero combined into a 2 player co-op game. Or even simpler: it’s 2 player Simon Says. One player plays a tune. Another player has the goal of repeating the tune. Then, the first player needs to play the tune a 3rd time. If they play the tune flawlessly, it gets repeated over and over again. Then, the second player may add more notes on top of that tune. It’s already a familiar concept but the visualization uses a spinning circle that really nails it. The only thing left to do was to tweak the difficulty. Repeating the tunes was a bit too unforgiving. Otherwise, it’s a finish product I’d love to see released.
One of our students – Maren Keitel – ended up working on a project in collaboration with participants from outside of CGL. Together, they made Punxatawney Adventures.
Punxatawney Adventure – It’s Groundhog Day Gaiden.
It’s a simple 2D platformer based on Groundhog Day. This means that the main character is a Groundhog for once. But the gameplay also references the movie. So it’s actually quite Masocore. You die over and over again. Only when you arrive at the end of the level, you realize that you had to pick up a certain item at the beginning. The game somewhat lacks the polish of a professional Masocore title but I really like the Groundhog Day reference. And hey, it’s actually playable!
One game that isn’t quite playable is Internity by Martin Wisniowski, another Game Jam veteran and a good friend.
Internity – DNF 
Sadly, this time around Martin wasn’t able to finish his game. He wanted to make a top-down shooter with proceduraly generated levels that react on the player’s behavior. But he was working alone and didn’t quite make it. On a more bright side, he wrote a really good recap of the Global Game Jam on his blog! Check it out.
One of my personal favorites was Nordic Bondage Hero Vikings. It’s based on a hilarious idea and it has some amazing polish.
Nordic Bondage Hero Vikings – Don’t worry. It’s nothing dirty.
To be honest, I may be a bit biased since one of the guys from the team was Michael Koloch, who is a really ambitious indie dev I met at various CGL events. The game is about two Vikings running away from a monster. They are tied together by a chain so they can’t get away from each other. The goal is to be a hero by dying an honorable death. You have to collect treasure or beer or kill enemies. Once you did enough of those things, you need to sacrifice yourself so the other viking can survive. It sounds weird. It is kinda is weird. But it is also quite charming. You know what? You can play it right now in the browser and see for yourself. Do it!
So that’s it for part 2. But there is still more to come! Tune in tomorrow for part 3.
