Tag: Game Jam »

On the weekend of 20th July, some of the best developers in the UK decided they didn't want to spend their free time on the beach (or, more likely, dodging rain showers), they wanted to join together to demonstrate just what the best of British means!

Joining together and in the space of 48 hours, developers such as Mind Candy, Mobile Pie, Greenfly Studios, Spilt Milk Studios, Onimobi and many more created Best of British: Summer Sports. Together, it's a celebration of quirky gaming and the UK's fine summer of sport courtesy of the 2012 Olympics in London.

The game is a collection of their impressive efforts and owes a lot to mini-game collections such as the Warioware series of games. Each game takes only a short time to complete, before moving onto the next one, but there's quirky humor galore. Even better, it costs absolutely nothing to download!

To learn more about the Best of British game jam , we shared some words with a few of the fine folks behind Best of British: Summer Sports.

As Dave Mitchell from Onimobi explained, his favorite aspect was "getting to know all the other developers at the event. It was great to find out about what everyone does, what they're working and also share game ideas for the jam. Being part of Best of British is about coming together and sharing skills, contacts, ideas and cross promotion. These game jams really capture that essence of collaborative and camaraderie!".

Time was a big problem, of course, with Dave having never used the Unity engine before to create games, but that just rallied the team together to ensure he had a great crash course in it, courtesy of Laurie Brown of Indie Skies.

Alistair Aitcheson of Greedy Bankers fame explained that part of the fun came from overcoming the technical issues that couldn't have been anticipated beforehand.

"Keeping everyone up-to-date with the latest version of the framework was hard work, and required a lot of running back and forth between teams. But that was part of the fun - it was like being in Scrapheap Challenge, building cool stuff and fixing it on the fly!", explained Alistair.

Mind Candy's Daniel Atherton went with a lighter note of expressing his delight at the "fantastic" Micro Machines tournament that was arranged thanks to the appearance of UK developers Kwalee, including the original developer of the Micro Machines series of games.

Was any sleep gained? Well, no, hardly any, even despite the comfortable bean bags at MindCandy HQ. Still, no one seems to be too concerned at such sleep deprivation as there are already plenty of hopes for another Jam in the near future.

Given how much fun Best of British: Summer Sports is, we can't wait to see what the collective can come up with next. The British iOS development industry is looking pretty strong indeed.