Farrah McQueen ’25 tries out another student’s Game Jam project.
Students collaborate over programming during Game Jam.
After weeks of hard work, excited students gathered to share their games and programming. The air was buzzing with discussions over how people made their games, and what the story behind them were. This meeting was a result of an event called Game Jam, a fun and challenging opportunity for game enthusiasts, computer programmers, and developers to create and submit original games.
This unique opportunity to showcase students’ creative talent was a two-week event that ended on April 23. Dr. Travis Feldman, Director of the i.d. Lab, facilitated the event in which students created analog or digital games based on this year’s theme, “Interstellar Worlds and Multiverse Adventures,” either individually or as teams. Then, awards including “Most Soothing Graphics” and “Most Unbeatable” were awarded to 25 of the participants.
Participating students chose from a wide variety of different topics provided by the organizing group for their game, including language barriers between alien civilizations, cultural and worldly differences, diplomatic negotiations between humans and aliens, and more. Once students chose their topic, they had two weeks before April 23 to create any sort of game that revolves around that idea. Participants created either a tabletop board game or a computer game depending on their strengths and preferences. The game was then judged by a panel of three teachers.
Dr. Feldman wanted to make sure that students understood prior experience was not required for participation. “We made it clear that we wanted to voice to the Choate community that you don’t need to know how to program,” he said.
Ryan Liu ’26 participated in Game Jam with no prior coding experience. Liu wanted to challenge himself by using a JavaScript library named p5.js, which is suited for newer programmers. His game focused on the dynamic movements of pixelated objects, and he created smooth transitions within the player’s inputs and actions on the screen. Liu loved his first experience with coding: “I can meet a lot of challenges, but I can solve them, and then the sense of achievement when I’m playing my own game is even greater.”
As his coding career continues, Liu said, “This experience will help me improve my coding when I’m making different games in the future because I can avoid so many different problems I [encountered] this time.” As a result of his work, Liu won the “Most Focused on Motor Skills” award and said he will continue to challenge himself and learn more.
Dameer Gay ’24, a student organizer for Game Jam 2023, wanted all students to know that “you can create anything you put your mind to if you have the will to learn and the drive to get better.” Gay’s notion rang true as Connor Zeitlin ’25, one of the only students to create a board game, won the award for most stellar concept.
Once all students had submitted their pieces, they gathered together and played each other’s games while showcasing their own. Dr. Feldman believes that this is the true goal of Game Jam. “Just being in the space for a Sunday afternoon, where everybody’s purpose is to eat good food and play games. The work to put together this event was worthwhile,” he reflected.
