In March 2020, just as restaurants, schools and businesses were closing in Canada due to COVID-19, I organized a game jam to help people focus their anxieties and emotions into creative work. Jamdemic 2020 lasted for a month and prompted participants to make a game about or inspired by our experiences living under the threat of COVID-19.
I created a discord group for the game jam and made sure to check in frequently, ask specific questions and encourage participants to share their progress, even if they were struggling, procrastinating or failing to do what they’d hoped.
We received almost 30 submissions from all sorts of genres, incuding real-time strategy games, tabletop RPGs, narrative games and dating sims.
I chose not to formally review submissions so as to encourage active participation from beginners, but I am currently working on a video highlighting some of the submissions. In the meantime, you can take a look at the jam page here. You can also check out my own submission for the jam, Dear Lighthouse.
Kaelan 