GDevelop sponsor at Coding Pirates Game Jam 2024

(The Coding Pirates Game Jam Logo of the year: Simon - Aarhus location)

This year the annual Danish Coding Pirates Game Jam was held in Aarhus and in Copenhagen. Among this year's sponsors was GDevelop.

Over 160 children (ages 8-17) had registered to join Aarhus at Dokk1 and Copenhagen at Visma Dinero for this year's Game Jam 2024 – on the 2nd-3rd of November. Thanks to our hosts, sponsors and many volunteers who made all this possible - volunteers were represented from 15 different Coding Pirates departments.

What is a Coding Pirates Game Jam

Coding Pirates' Game Jam is a national competition where children and young people - ages 8-17 - compete over 24 hours to develop and code the coolest games. The children work in teams to develop the games. Which means that it is a team effort, where the children's abilities for cooperation, creativity, design development, programming and imagination come into play. Game Jam has been Coding Pirates' biggest annual event since 2014, where over 160 children and young people can participate. The event takes place at several locations. This year in Aarhus and in Copenhagen at the same time.

Since Game Jam is a game development competition, the groups create their own games from scratch. Some code with block-programming, text-programming or a third type, while others may be good at drawing and have knowledge of graphic programs or have tried working with sound.

Although the Coding Pirates Game Jam is a competition of producing the best games of the year. It’s also very much a social event for both children and volunteers and a great way to practice your skills in collaboration and project management.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Per - Copenhagen location)

Teams and technology

The participants are divided into teams, containing a maximum of 5 persons. At the Copenhagen location we use our Teaminator (programmed by one of the volunteers) to sort all participants out into teams. The Teaminator takes into account what technology they each have skills in - programming type, graphics, sound - their age and if they know of others they wanna team up with.

When the contest has started, each team decides what technology/programme they wanna make their game in - whether it’s Scratch, GDevelop, GoDot, Unity etc.. During the event volunteers will be there to help them if they hit obstacles or issues they can’t fix themselves and guide them through it.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Mathies - Copenhagen location)

Planning the event

The locations work together to plan the overall setting of the Game Jam - national for Coding Pirates in Denmark. That includes among others the same date, the yearly logo on our t-shirts with our yearly sponsors on back, our trophies design and the theme of the year. Smaller details like break activities, most of the goodie bags content and the speakers of the year are different.

(Picture of the check-in at the Copenhagen location. PHOTO CREDIT: Christian and Maria - Copenhagen location)

At the Copenhagen location we were again this year lucky to borrow some retro machines from Dansk Datahistorisk Forening to offer as a break activity - usually we try finding games that match the theme a bit. This year the machines came ready installed with Doom, the original SimCity and Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, to big joy not only for the kids but the volunteers as well.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Christian and Martin - Copenhagen location)

Theme of the year!

Again this year, suggestions for themes were collected from various volunteers across the departments. As always, the theme is chosen by a few (the event planners) and ONLY revealed on the day of the event - at the start of the competition as the clock turns on.

The event planners from the two locations had many good suggestions to choose from again this year, but this year's theme fell on... "Connections!". The theme offered many good associations and idea generation among the children.

(PHOTO CREDIT: Christian and Maria - Copenhagen location)

Accepting extra challenges!

At the Copenhagen location we give all the teams a chance to come and draw extra challenges. These challenges are an unexpected obstacle or limitation that is used to create momentum and innovation in the idea development process. If solved in a good way the judges can take this into consideration by adding points to the voting of the game. It’s the planning group of the location that comes up with the extra challenges each year and make sure that it’s a good mix of both simple and easy challenges to solve and hard ones.

Each team can come and draw a number (1-20) and get the challenge read out loud. The team has two free passes where they can say no to a drawn challenge. If they use up both two no’s and furthermore chooses a challenge, they must accept that challenge regardless. Lots of teams always comes to draw these extra challenges, it’s a team decision and it’s always fun to see and hear how they talk and strategically plan how they can solve it and their next move after getting a challenge revealed 😄

Judges

At each location a judge panel goes through all the games as the 24 hours have run out, and reveal each winner of the 5 award winning categories at each location at the end of the event. For each location it applies, that a team can only be rewarded one award for their game, by doing so more teams have a chance of winning an award during the event.

There is however some difference from location to location how the judges work and how the teams deliver their game. At the Aarhus location the judge panel goes around to each team to get an introduction of their game. In Copenhagen all the teams must share a short video of maximum 1 minute e.g telling about certain features and if they manage to succeed with their challenges, if they used AI tell how they creatively had made use of it and also turn in a link to their game. The judge panel then goes through it all behind closed doors and decides the 5 winning teams.

Award winning Categories

• Best Game!
• The Design- or innovations-prize
• The Teamwork prize
• The Best Sound Design
• The Pirate Prize

This year we were lucky to have GDevelop sponsor as part of our main prize for the award Best Game 2024 on both locations - a 1 month SILVER membership 🥳

(Trophies for the winner categories. Best Game winners at the Copenhagen location. PHOTO CREDIT: Mette and Mathies - Copenhagen location)

Celebrating a decade!

This year the Copenhagen location could celebrate the 10th year of holding the annual Game Jam, which of course meant a cake feast for all at the location, thanks to our generous host. 

(PHOTO CREDIT: Christian and Maria - Copenhagen location)

Thanks for this year!

Game Jam is only possible due to our generous sponsors and all the awesome volunteers joining to help make the event a success. A huge thanks to GDevelop for the contribution to this year’s event 🙏