This year's Global Game Jam theme was Extinction.
This seemed to produce a lot of ideas using the extinction of mankind as a springboard for tried-and-true (tired and true?) gameplay, i.e., "the aliens are invading and are going to make mankind extinct, kill the aliens". On the other hand it was also a fairly "negative" theme in terms of energy.
At our local jam there were quite a few projects that fit into the first category, and a few that went further and managed to create interaction that tied in more meaningfully to the theme. I think my favorite game was based around a clever and simple concept-- escape pods infected with a disease that you must keep separated by tapping on an iphone.
At any rate I didn't have or want to devote quite as much time or energy as some other jammers so I sort-of did my own thing, which maybe in some ways is the best way to enjoy an event like this (you get to enjoy the company of other people with similar interest without always being in conflict with them. =)
The Friday night I took a bike ride home and towards the end of it thought up this thing, which in the end came quite close to what I originally intended.
It's three scenarios about extinction, you can control them but not meaningfully affect the (negative) outcome; each scenario is followed by slightly a black-humored explanation.
This was really fun to present together with Yules Wai who helped a lot with the audio for the game.
>>> PONUS <<<Let me know what you think. There is no hidden meaning here, it's more just an atmospheric exploration of the theme I guess. Again it was very fun to present as we had the sound effects quite loud and when paired with the dramatic/comedic readings it was pretty entertaining (I hope.)
