publisher Ross Kilgariff (right) of OrcFace Games. --->
Many great competitions and game jams finished recently, and we feature the high-profile Dreamcast game jam this time. We also want to draw your attention to the recent NESmaker jam, Byte Off V – you can play all the entries online at bit.ly/byteoffv We recommend trying the awesome Backwards Quest and the surprisingly emotional Hold The Light. Next issue, we will bring you coverage of the BASIC 10-Liner Competition.
It was envy that fuelled this latest game jam, as developer Cypress reveals. “I was jealous of the fact that the Saturn and Game Boy scenes had popular game jams that got submissions every year, and Dreamcast did not.” He developed his entry,
Murph’s Big Puddle Fishing, using, “A combination of KallistiOS and Raylib. In the future, I’d like to move to DreamScape by OrcFace or Simulant Studio from Kazade.”
Cypress is also hoping the jam becomes a regular occurrence. “I’m actively developing a couple of tools and games. One is for my Dream Disc ‘25 entry, I’m still working on MintratVMU (a tool for making VMU art and animations) and ChaoGen (a program to generate and transfer Chao between Sonic Adventure games); along with some tools to make my entry easier to develop.”
Publisher OrcFace Games and Ross Kilgariff are creating the physical disc. “We want to bring more games to the platform, and a game jam is a great way to give developers experience working together with us,” Ross says. “Our game, HarleQuest! started as a game jam project, so it’s in our DNA. Our decision to compile all the games into one disc and give it away for the cost of shipping seemed like the best way to get the developers’ work into as many hands as possible.” The jam itself was hosted via itch.io. “Itch gave us a simple way to allow developers to handle their own submissions and have them listed on one page,” says Ross. “There are missing features that would have really helped us, we are planning to build our own solution for next time. Life can get in the way, so we were half-expecting the developers to drop out or be unable to finish their projects in time. Instead, we got 24 very solid submissions from people of different backgrounds and skill levels.” The judging panel chose their top ten games, and the overall rankings were decided from those lists (see the Favourite Five panel for the top five). The top three earned cash prizes from the sponsor pool.
FAVOURITE FIVE
The Top 5 entries as voted by the judging panel
5TH
STARSHIP MADNESS
(Yomboprime)
4TH
BLACK HOLE DESCENT
(Frogbull)
3RD
THE ETERNAL SLEEP
(Locked Door Puzzle)
2ND
DEFUSEBALL
(Freakdave)
1ST
SKY PIRATES OF ETALMAR
(Wufsoft)
The menu system and artwork drew inspiration from an interesting source. “We’re going for something inspired by Y2K futurism with logo design elements from Verbatim’s CD-R boxes, which I always thought looked cool,” says Ross. With the release imminent, OrcFace have other projects underway, starting with the recently published Dreamcast conversion of NES hit The Storied Sword. “Our biggest release this year is HarleQuest! planned to release in Q3,” Ross says. Before that, we’ll be releasing Chew Chew Mimic, inspired by Chu Chu Rocket – developed by Lowtek Games and Rigg’d Games (John Riggs). We may have something exciting lined up for Q4 as well!” Download the jam games from bit.ly/dreamdisc24 – the disc will be available from orcface.com/store