Greetings from Game Jam Island!
Hey! Feels like an age since we did a little journal-style blog post. Today we’re changing that up with a doozy! We’re sending this out from an ultra jam/ ridiculous lark/ extended work party known as Game Jam Island. Based out of a lovely villa in beautiful Mauritius, Game Jam Island has been a temporary HQ for Free Lives (currently between houses in Cape Town) and a rotating cast of kindred spirits from across The Globe.
As Free Lives employees, it’s meant that Team Lazerbeam’s Jason and Rich have spent three months in a tropical paradise, with a fantastic collection of friends around them. Significant to you (dear Team Lazerbeam fan) is the fact that I (Ben) joined the party on the 25th of October, meaning the TLB holy trinity has been united for the past month!
It’s been a dream hanging out together each day, talking about our games, future plans, old films and fruit bats. We’ve had a ton of adventures together. There was the day where we drank rum on a boat, and visited an ocean waterfall, and splashed around in the cyan waters of an island paradise.
There was the day that we belatedly celebrated Rich and Jason’s birthdays (as Ben and Anja had missed both while the boys were away on Game Jam Island). As a gift Anja had put together a “Team Lazerbeam Treat Yo Self Supreme” box. This translated to the three of us poolside, in bathrobes, listening to some sweet post rock, drinking whiskey, eating chocolate and wearing face-masks.
This occasion also seemed like a great opportunity to slap on the set of stick-on tattoos that I’d procured for us while hanging out in Nottingham’s dreamy twee-punk underground.
There were weekend nights spent around dinners we’d cooked, and rustling through bags of candy at 2AM on random Tuesday mornings. There was picnicking in the rain, on the beach of private island we shouldn’t have been on. There was talking about Romance Rumble, and Snow Cones Episodes 2 to 8, and that still-unnamed, still-unfinished absurd RPG-thing that we started making a year ago. There’ve been hugs and high fives and all the special moments that inspired them.
You can look forward to no less than two Lazerjamz that have been shot to document some of these times we spent together. Another great way to get a window into our time on Game Jam Island is to watch the web series that chronicles the whole crazy adventure. You can check it all out here. Alternatively, jump straight to highlights like our friends creating a demake of Wrestling With Emotions, or Ben’s arrival, or that time we were hot females, or when we gave away some news about Snow Cones 2.
Tomorrow I fly home to South Africa. Jason and Rich won’t be far behind, arriving in Cape Town next Tuesday. After more than two months of travel I’m excited to be heading home. Rich and Jay both feel much the same. At the same time, it’s bittersweet knowing we need to leave this game dev utopia. But, while Cape Town may not be as idyllic as a secluded corner of Mauritius, the reality is that we’re all heading back to the same city. A week from now all three of us could be huddled together in the same room once more, making games about shy ice cream cones or lonely wrestlers or deranged personified websites. Game Jam Island has been a dream home for the three of us, but home is just a place where you’re with the people you love. I’m so glad that after this crazy adventure we’re all be heading back to the same home as one another.