#breaktris

[spewagepipe]

The MolyJam game jam, much like Ludum Dare, is a 48-hour arrangement, but instead of building around a Jam-wide theme, MolyJams involve the developers building something based on the semi-ridiculous game idea tweets made by the Peter Molyneux parody twitter account, Peter Molydeux. 

Breaktris here is modeled after this tweet:

Imagine being able to launch a missile in Battlefield and have it hit your online friend's car in say Burnout Paradise? This is the future

Playing on the idea of players engaging in wholly different games that nevertheless interact, Breaktris takes two classics, Tetris and Breakout, and mashes them up. When a player completes a row in Tetris, it adds a line of bricks to the Breakout game. When the Breakout ball bounces around up past the bricks, it then comes bouncing back down on the Tetris side, destroying squares to prevent the completion of lines. 

[jampact-blog]

MolyJam - the best parody-inspired gathering ever?

Molyjam turned from a simple low key game jam to a phenomenal event, with over 300 games submitted.

Based upon the Twitter account PeterMolydeux, MolyJam 2013 has generated some of the most creative game jam content we've witnessed. The parody Twitter account is based upon legendary games designer Peter Molyneux, of Fable and Black and White fame. The developer is notorious for his eccentric ideas for games, many of which he fails to deliver on. 

The parody account regularly tweets surreal game ideas, imitating Molyneux's eccentric concepts. The only rule for this game jam was to use any tweet from the account as an inspiration for the game submitted. 

The Molyjam, despite its limited promotion, saw a huge surge of developers at the event. Patrick Klepek, one of the event organisers spoke of the overwhelming amount of contributions: 

"We expected a couple dozen people to show up for this thing--total. That was three weeks ago, when it seemed like What Would Molydeux? would be a Bay Area party. Instead, we had well over 1,000 game developers, ranging from the amateur to the professional, making interesting, touching, crazy, hilarious video games under the ever present 48-hour deadline that we’d arbitrarily came up with weeks before.

Here are the top three projects I discovered from the event. 

1. Breaktris

Molydeux inspirational Tweet:

This is a legimately fun cooperative game. One player controls the Tetris side, the other Breakout. Both sides interact with one another, primarily with Breaktris' ball entering the Tetris game. It's an interesting idea mixing popular video game games and concepts. Breaktris successfully collides two beloved titles and with a surprisingly polished execution.

2. Unbearable

Molydeux inspirational Tweet:

This game jam is both terrifying and hilarious. You play as a bear with the sole desire to hug people. This doesn't end terrifcly as, well, you're a bear. The game has a good self awareness, I just with the graphics were more bearable (see what I did there? DID YOU SEE?)

3. Secret Dad

Molydeux inspirational Tweet:

Based upon the slightly depressing premise of divorce splitting a family, you have to complete menial house tasks as you try to win back your family's love. You have to remain unseen by other members of the family and use ventilation ducks to move around the house (because that's not disturbing at all)

I admire when game developers try to combine mundane tasks with game mechanics such as stealth. It's fantastic to watch when it's executed well.

I think its fantastic how Moly Jam had become so successful. For something to become this creative and productive is inspirational, seeing how this originated from simply a joke. Many people want to be part of the games industry, and this demonstrates how there are a lot of talented underground developers. Game jams allows these developers with little exposure to get their work experienced. 

Let us know in the comments what you thought of this game jam!