Together even apart: Women Game Jam 2020
My history with game jams is short but intense (ha, just like the jams themselves). I first learned about game jams when I was going to Berklee, but back then even though I liked video games, I was more focused on gaining film scoring experience. At Berklee they offered a minor in video game scoring, and all my peers that did it looked so well prepared and knowledgeable with all the tools. It looked like fun! But I was super intimidated. Plus some of the jams were hosted by MIT so, of course I was intimidated x100. So I dodged jams until I returned to Monterrey. My sister and her friends were going to the Global Game Jam 2018. It was everyone’s first jam so I felt a bit more confident when I tagged along. Holy crap, it was intense. Even though our game wasn’t built very well, I learned a lot and I was proud of my work. I managed to finish all the tracks and I didn’t know I had it in me to work creatively that fast.
But since then, everything went downhill. I did two more Global Game Jams, one 48toplay, and one itch.io online jam. It’s a long rant I don’t want to write, but long story short after suffering this year’s GGJ I thought well, maybe I’m too old and salty for this stuff. So I decided to leave jams. But then for better or worse, the pandemic brought to my attention a new opportunity: the Women Game Jam 2020. It was going to be online (via discord and itch.io), and would last a little over a week. So I gave it some thought and decided to give it a chance, one more jam! This time I would also do something I didn’t dare to do on previous jams: arrive to the event without a team.
So here I was! Joining the discord server of Women in Gamex, who were in charge of Mexico’s jammers. The vibe was really chill and friendly, and they offered lots of workshops leading to the jam. When it was time to make the teams, I was adopted immediately by a group of super fun and talented girls. After the theme reveal, we brainstormed ideas and decided to do a party game that involved Kaijus...but not any type of Kaiju...these were kawaii Kaijus, hence the name of our game: KawaiiJu.
Kawaii? Yes! You play as some lovely kaiju plushies in a multiplayer arena. You have to hug the other players and throw them off the platform to knock down the surrounding city made of cute toys. You need to knock the buildings to earn points, and the player with the highest score wins.
Our visual concept was that of a kid playing with his toys during quarantine. I used this to develop the sound of the game. I had to make something that had an action/fighting vibe, but super lighthearted and...well, kawaii. I combined epic elements like strings, taiko drums, and horns with some fun timbres like glockenspiels, synths, and toy percussion. I took the risk of starting to write music right away. I began working on the main menu to develop a main theme, and thanks to that I was able to define the sound of the game. For the sound FX I opted for a more electronic approach to accentuate the whimsical visuals.
With the music concept ready I decided to dive into the in-game music. I uploaded a bunch of stories on my IG to let everyone see my creative process. Remember I mentioned it was risky to start writing music right away? Here’s why :) Around mid-week we received feedback from the jam mentors and we realized we were drifting away from our initial party game concept. So we had to restructure some details regarding gameplay and this affects the music. Luckily, it wasn’t that bad. I just had to figure out a way to shorten my music loops and figure out new transitions. When the game is still not well defined, things are likely to be changing a lot for some time and that’s why trying to get the music done at an early stage is a bit risky. But in spite of all, we managed to make a wonderful game!
Enough foreplay! Here’s the music I did for KawaiiJu:
If you’re interested in playing our game, go and download it here! We still have to fix things, but we’re working on it! We want to keep developing KawaiiJu to make it even more fun. Follow us on our social media (Facebook, Instagram) to stay up to date with our future plans ;)
Thank you for reading! And enjoy KawaiiJu!
Monica Lyrae
Composer, Songwriter, and apparently, still a jammer :)