March 2, 2023

This paid piece is sponsored by Dakota State University. 

Global Game Jam is the world’s largest game creation event, with thousands of gamers participating at hundreds of physical and virtual sites. The GGJ organization describes a game jam as a brief time, approximately 48 hours, when people gather to create games around a new theme each year.

The first GGJ took place in 2009, and Dakota State University has been a host site ever since.

This year, “we were the largest game jam site in South Dakota,” said Erik Pederson, assistant professor of game design. “We were up 30 percent in numbers from last year.”

This event introduces freshman and sophomore DSU students to the process of seeing a game through the entirety of its development.

Pederson appreciates the event bringing students together to build products and learn quickly outside the classroom.

“It’s hand-on,” he said. “They must do all the problem-solving themselves. If they can’t figure it out, they have to get up and walk to a different team and see if there’s someone on a different team that could potentially help them.”

Some students attend the game jam to offer support to the groups participating. Senior game design major Dylan Van Den Hemel assisted groups with coding and specific problems like developing a grapple hook mechanic.

Van Den Hemel explains what he is doing as he types the code, so the students learn and absorb what is happening.

He enjoys helping students through mistakes he has made in the past. He assisted both days to watch the progress the groups made and see the finished games.

Completing games enables the students to provide proof of concept to the game design industry upon graduation.

“They’ve been through a production cycle from start to finish,” Pederson said, “and they’ve had to figure out how to make it happen. It’s practical application.”

The GGJ also allows students to choose what they make. “It’s fun to see them have that excitement of creating something that they want to create and not what we dictate,” said Peter Britton, assistant professor of game design.

Outside of participating in the annual game jam, juniors and seniors spend two semesters in a project class creating a game from start to finish each year.

Soul Searching

A team of four students launched Soul Searching last fall on the Steam website. Mason Allam developed the idea for the game and worked with Van Den Hemel, Eric Jansen and Hunter Schmeichel to bring it to life.

The game’s descriptor reads: “In this puzzle stealth game, your soul has been captured by an evil necromancer determined to take over the lands! Can you escape his perilous dungeon home to warn the kingdom before the undead rise and take over the throne?”

Undead minions and other lost souls serve as obstacles to the players’ escape. They must solve various puzzles on each dungeon floor to ascend to the surface.

Van Den Hemel worked as the sole programmer on the project, writing code for the game and developing the main menu and its features. He enjoys the process of solving problems and fixing bugs.

“It’s very satisfying, especially when you get to do things that just work right away,” he said.

Experience in the classroom helps the students develop a solid knowledge base of all areas of game development. Later, professors help guide students in the area where they excel.

“So when you’re a junior and senior, you know what other people on your team are doing, and you can help them or understand their struggles and the process they have to go through,” Van Den Hemel said.

Soul Searching was the first big game Schmeichel, a senior game design major, had worked on. He served as a 3D artist, made models for the game, did texture work and assisted with sound effects.

“It feels incredible to see something that I worked on be on Steam and to see people play it and hopefully enjoy it,” Schmeichel said.

Pederson describes the students’ work finishing complete games and posting them on Steam as resume-building accomplishments. So far, the feedback for Soul Searching has been positive, with the biggest complaint being that players wish there were more levels to the game, he said.

Soul Searching is available to download for free on Steam.