Analogue Mini Jam opens creative minds
Game design students went analogue at the Mini Jam game day, hosted at the IIE-Vega Bordeaux campus.
As a lead up to the Main Jam in Rosebank, the Independent Institute of Education (IIE)-Vega in Bordeaux recently hosted a successful Mini Jam.
The event brought game design students from across South Africa together for a day of creativity, collaboration, and hands on game development.
Both annual events form part of the Campus Game Jam, a national initiative by Two Name Games, which aims to build a strong, student driven game development community, encouraging connection and collaboration long before graduation.
Also read: IIE-Vega held an Analogue Mini Jam game day
While most of the students attended the Mini Jam in person, others joined remotely via Discord, a free voice and text application popular among gaming communities. Participating institutions included the IIE-Vega Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Pretoria campuses, Eduvos, SAE Institute South Africa, and the University of Witwatersrand.
Cheyenne Peter, head of The Campus Game Jam management team, explained that this year, they chose to make the Mini Jam an analogue game, with no digital creations allowed. “The focus was on real world playful interactions, which ranged from board games to unique controller concepts and everything in between.” It was the first time the school hosted a purely analogue game jam. “We weren’t sure what to expect, but we were pleasantly surprised by the range of inventive and playful games. We even ran overtime just to finish playtesting all the games. That’s how much fun we were having.”
Kyle Smith, head of department game design and development at IIE-Vega, described the six-hour event as ‘electric’. “The room buzzed with creativity, laughter, and the kind of focused chaos that only a game jam can produce. Participants fully immersed themselves in the creative process, driven by a shared passion for game design and development.”
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He added that the shift away from screens allowed participants to reconnect with the fundamentals of game design, without the constraints of code or software. “The Campus Game Jam and its Mini Jams are a reminder of the incredible talent and passion that exists within South Africa’s young game design and development community.”
Among the first-time participants was Latita Mvunelo, a second year IIE Bachelor of Computer and Information Sciences in Game Design and Development student. Mvunelo explained that they enjoyed making their board game, which was inspired by Scrabble. “We made random and filler words. Each player received 10 words. The first player started with an opening word to make a sentence. The other players had to continue with their words to build cohesive sentences. The lecturers had a good laugh at some of the sentences we produced.”
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