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This weekend I was really excited because NASA was going to host a game jam (on my birthday!) right by where I live. But then it turned out they were sold out of tickets. So instead I set up a “Kicked Out Of Nasa” Game Jam on Glorious Trainwrecks with the suggested theme of “games about being denied access to space”. A bunch of my friends met up at Anna Anthropy’s place to make stuff and it was awesome.

Here are the games that wound up getting submitted:

HOWLER?

I made this one! You can download it here:

• Mac Version
• Windows Version

This was originally going to be something wildly different, but I got so distracted messing with the video-feedback shader effect I was going to use that I just added music to that and made it the whole game. It basically just fills your screen with rainbows. The music is by Liz Ryerson who also did the music for Anna’s game below.

I posted some 6-second demo videos on Vine: Vine 1, Vine 2

Dirty Dishes

This was made by the lovely Amy Dentata, she described it as sort of like Tetris. It issues you a challenge: Carefully stack the dirty dishware in the sink without breaking it. This is REALLY HARD. Amy’s roommates must buy the cheapest dishes. It makes for an interesting challenge tho!

When Amy plays this she pretty much just seems to repeatedly spam the debug button to spawn extra dishware and cover the screen in broken glass.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

Typing With Hands

Loren Schmidt made this and he describes it as a simulator that allows you to experience what it is like to type using hands, like maybe in case you’re an alien or something and you have tentacles instead of hands. It puts a picture of some hands on a keyboard up on the screen, and when you press keys it shows the hands typing them. It makes this fascinating body-disassociation effect because you’re typing and you’re watching hands typing but they’re NOT YOUR HANDS (unless you’re Kim in which case they are your hands).

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

FORBIDDEN SPACE

This was event hostess Anna Anthropy‘s game and probably the most on-theme entry we had. This is the kind of thing I really like to see people experimenting with– in a much more interesting enlargement of what I was trying to do with Shadowland Prophesy, this is a game which takes place outside of “game space” and mostly on your own computer. Aliens command you to never again use the space bar, after which the game minimizes itself and you are left to return to your daily tasks, using Firefox, whatever. Until you press the space bar, at which point the game pops back up and informs you YOU HAVE LOST and THE EARTH IS DESTROYED. This is the other piece Liz did music for yesterday.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

PRESS SPACE TO SHINY

Wade McGillis is the maker of a simple but haunting PC/iPhone game called AstroNOT where a little blue pixel person basically gets lost on a gigantic, baffling C64-y planet. Along those same lines he made this little 2-screen thing with an astronaut that jumps around and sparkes. Apparently he meant it to be longer at some point, as it is though it has pretty colors.

Spaaaaaarkle

Play online on GloriousTrainwrecks

Bonkers Space Patrol

Redbone submitted this to the jam over the Internet, I didn’t get to play it (no Mac version) but I watched someone else and it’s actually kind of hilariously chaotic. Anna’s description of the rules were “things from space are sent into space, things from Earth go back to Earth”.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

Horrible Mazes 3: No Space For You

Overkill describes this game thusly: “This game is horrible, and has some really uninspired mazes. Enjoy.” The graphics on this one are pretty and it made me laugh. I can’t figure out if I got to the end or not.

Play online on GloriousTrainwrecks

Science Jam

This one’s a Knytt Story. Knytt Stories 4ever

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

Empty Void of Space

This is the most mysterious of the jam entries, and was the first one submitted. Again because of a lack of mac version I could not play it, but the author describes it as an “EXTREMELY REALISTIC GAME”. I think… I think someone actually made an accurate simulation of the empty, unmoving void of space.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

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UPDATES

Satellite Destroyer

Eli Brody submitted this a little bit after the jam. I cannot play it because XNA, but the idea is that you destroy actual satellites rendered in realtime from NASA’s publicly available tracking data. That is awesome.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

Out of Space

Another late entry by Chigbarg, who actually came to the in-person jam but his monitor got smashed on the drive over so he couldn’t do anything. Anyway after the jam he made this and I am not sure I understand it at ALL but it’s AWESOME and moody and gorgeous. The premise is you need to board the spaceship, but cannot.

Download on GloriousTrainwrecks

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