Celebrating one of the biggest gaming events around the world, Global Game Jam rockets back to its former glory with a physical event hosted in the Inland Norway university of applied sciences campus in Hamar.

Following the trend of more and more in-person physical events, Global game jam is one of the world’s most attended game related events. With well over 47,000 individual participants who all share the same goal of creating a product in a set short amount of time.

Making a video game is rarely easy. Now if we add the challenge of only having 48 hours to create a product to present makes it seem impossible. Yet over 200 individuals made up of students, artists, programmers, music producers and even professionals from big name game studios like Funcom showed up with great resolve. After a great opening presentation and a talk by keynote speaker Thomas French from Krillbite in auditorium 1, the jammers were more than ready to brainstorm ideas around the two themes: Reconnect, Hamar’s local theme, and Roots, the global theme for this years GGJ.

During the event, there were a number of different talks from people who work in the industry and other game developers. Everything from Unity dev tips and tricks, to Interactive sound design workshop. After 48 hours of hard work, no sleep and too much pizza, The deadline for Global game jam 2023 crept in and it was time to present the games and projects that were made, everyone made their way back to auditorium 1 to present what they had created. Hamar’s Game Jam site this year had 215 registered participants, making it number 9 in Europe, and number 12 globally, which is all thanks to every person and the incredible volunteers who attended Hamar’s global game jam site this year!

If you are interested in participating or learning more about Global game jam next year, read more at: https://globalgamejam.org/

Written by Jørgen Nilsen