A weekend full of games and pizza! 
In Spring 2022, FrostBit arranged Frosted Game Jams together with students at the LapUAS Campus.
The event began by gathering at the University of Applied Sciences’ ShowRoom, where desk setups and PCs had already been arranged. The theme was unveiled in the form of a fun trailer, and the theme of these jams eventually ended up being: “There’s nothing in the beginning. / The beginning was emptiness.” And traditionally, the theme is always fully interpretable by the participants, so anything can be expected as a result!
Participants were divided into groups of their choice and some decided to want make a game alone. After that, the ideation stage started, and the participants jumped to work immediately. That is how the weekend started rolling: in the form of game development with a lot of snacks and drinks!
If you’re wondering what Game Jams are all about in practice, the concept goes this way: People from different backgrounds (e.g. 3D-modelling, 2D graphics, programming, UX design …) and people interested in making games find themselves together and make the game according to the Jam theme. The games can be, for example, PC games, board games, card games, console games, or whatever games the participants come up with. The end result, however, is not to pressure the participants into creating something completely ready and playable, and this is often an integral part of the Jams: Projects aren’t always completed to the last detail. The main goal is to innovate together, have fun, and share a passion for games! So you don’t have to be a Programmer God to participate, you’re sure to find your own place in one of the groups.
What it looked like at the first Frosted Game Jams:
So what amazing games were produced in the end?
We put together a small trailer compilation of the games created, which some of the participants shared afterwards. Projects have been produced e.g. With Unity, UE5 and of course crafted with real hands!
Well, tentatively the second Jam is planned for the coming fall of 2022, as long as we find enough time for arrangements! We gathered feedback from those who participated in the Spring Jams, and received a lot of good suggestions for improvements that could take the Jams of the future much further. We are putting more effort into the space arrangements and investing in the Jams as well as an audience event that would be interesting for non-developers as well. So in the upcoming Jams, you can also invite friends to hang out, even play console or board games, or try out the lab’s VR outputs and other interesting things.
One of the hot topics among our lab has also been the previous Jams that pLab once organized: photography and clips of the old games are planned to be shared here in FrostBit’s website. Many people are interested what do Jams actually look like and what kind of games are created – so stay tuned at the FrostBit website in the near future for all of that. We are excited to be involved in producing gaming events in Rovaniemi, where they definetly are needed more!
For non-Finnish-speaking participants: If you would be interested to join future Jams, please contact the admins in the Frosted Game Jam Discord. We will take this into consideration when planning the future Jams, in case there is demand.
Thanks to Lapland University of Applied Sciences for letting us use their facilities for the event!