As Halloween approaches, CSUN’s Game Development Club (GDC) organized an interscholastic horror-themed Game Jam. On Friday, Oct. 18, the CSUN GDC hosted a launch party at 1 p.m., where GDC members gathered to mingle and view the prizes that were part of the Game Jam.

Amongst the participants being CSUN students, many different local universities were also part of the Game Jam, including Cal State Fullerton, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, University of California, Riverside, and four more universities’ game development clubs.

A Game Jam is typically an event where game developers create a game that fits a specific theme in a limited amount of time. For this horror-themed Game Jam, participants receive three keywords at 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 18, which were required to incorporate into their games. They had until 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 20 to complete their game and submit it to itch.io, a platform that hosts independent, or “indie” games, comics and music.

These developers, from various disciplines, contributed artwork (graphics), game design, music and coding to a completely original game, all within 41 hours.

CSUN student, and Game Jam participant, Maneekan Jonjaran, was excited and nervous about the Game Jam.

“This is my first Game Jam, and it will be an interesting experience to see what the other teams are doing,” said Jonjaran.

Anastasia Naydina, the president of the CSUN GDC, spoke about the process of organizing participants leading up to the launch of the Game Jam.

“Over a hundred members have signed up to join a team to be part of this event. So we put them in teams, or they bring their own team, max of five team developers,” said Naydina.

Naydina also discussed the judging process, explaining that teams were provided a rubric based on various game categories including audio, visuals and programming. The judges will score the games anonymously using the rubric looking for unique ideas in game design, graphics and music, while also checking if the themes of the Game Jam’s themes are followed and that the games are playable free of bugs and errors.

Naydina mentioned that the panel of judges are all important and established individuals.

“These three judges comprise of people that work in the industry and a professor. We have one person who currently works at Rockstar Games as a programmer, another judge who works as a concept artist at EA games and a professor from Cal Poly Pomona who’s in the computer science department,” said Naydina.

The prizes for all Game Jam teams consist of Steam gift cards. Each category, which are audio/visual, programming and game design, will give $5 gift cards to each member of a team. Exclusive to CSUN participants, students of a winning team will receive “League of Legends” merch, an “Arcane” hoodie, and a copy of the “Ruination: A League of Legends Novel” book. There is also a grand prize, exclusive to CSUN members, that remains a mystery as organizers are keeping it under wraps to build excitement.

CSUN student and Game Jam participant, Jackson Shea, talked about the grand prize.

“It definitely motivates me way more now to make the best game that I can with my team,” said Shea also added how he planned to approach the horror theme when he said, “I specifically think that what makes horror games scary are jump scares and sound cues for those jump scares. So I think what we’re going to try to do is incorporate more audio and visuals that will make the game scarier.”

Interested in checking out the submissions? The games are now playable on itch.io on the CSUN GDC’s Halloween Horror Game Jam page, available through either web browser or on Windows computers, depending on the submission.

Stay tuned to The Sundial for follow up when the winners are announced!