Game Jams With Unity

Boost development skills with friendly competition

Beamable is the low-code option for rapidly adding social, commerce, and content management features to your live game.

Here are some ideas on how to use Beamable to empower your next Game Jam event.

What Is A Game Jam?

Prototyping is the exercise of answering design questions; often early, quickly, and cheaply.

A Game Jam is a formalized event, where game makers create prototypes as individuals or small teams.

The motivation to participate in a Game Jam varies. For some game makers its a chance to meet new people, to learn new skills, or just to have fun!

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Ex. 48hr Game Jam

Popular Game Jams

You can remotely join a global game jam, find one in your local area, or create your own Game Jam and host it on a site like Twitch.io.

  • Global Game Jam® (48hrs) - The world's largest game creation event taking place around the globe each year, exploring the process of development, be it programming, iterative design, narrative exploration or artistic expression. The GGJ encourages people with all kinds of backgrounds to participate
  • Nordic Game Jam (48hrs) - We love the creative, open and supportive nature of the game industry. We want to support that, and we encourage everyone – industry pro or hobby game tinkerer – to come to our annual event and have fun, learn, and inspire other people.
  • Ludum Dare (48hrs) - An online event where games are made from scratch in a weekend. Check us out every April and October!
Game Jams are a great way to prove your skills and show concrete work. These projects can help you land your next job. - Timur Haussila (Supercell)

Structure of a Game Jam

The duration and order of events for a Game Jam will vary greatly. Many Game Jam events start Friday evening and last 48 hours from start to finish. That is 3 calendar days; Friday, Saturday Sunday.

Depending on the level of competition, some teams may choose to take little or no sleep breaks :)

  1. Start - The organizers may announce a theme (e.g. "Health", "Darkness", etc...). Game makers quickly form teams (e.g. programmer, art, game designer, etc...). Then each team dreams up the best idea which fits the theme. To make the best use of limited time, finish this step by the end of day 1
  2. Game Jam - Design the idea quickly and get into development as fast as possible. Set conservative goals for game scope and complexity. Create the minimum viable product (MVP) by the end of day 2
  3. Polish - Now with a simple, complete game MVP, use all of day 3 to add polish (e.g. graphics, sound, animation, etc...) to take the project from good to great

Often, after the time limit is reached, the games are evaluated and winner(s) are selected.

Game Jams With Beamable

Beamable provides an SDK that enables game makers to easily add social, commerce and content management features to their games with a low-code approach that uses drag-and-drop Feature Prefabs inside Unity. The offerings are organized by Feature and powerful Tool Windows.

Focus on what matters — the game, the art, the experience, the story — and leave the rest to Beamable.

Read more about Prototyping With Beamable.

Interested to use Beamable for prototyping? Contact us.

Beamable Features

Beamable provides an SDK that enables game makers to easily add social, commerce and content management features to their games with a low-code approach that uses drag-and-drop Feature Prefabs inside Unity. The offerings are organized by Feature. This documentation has a page per Feature as well as helpful Guide pages which serve as a high-level how-to.

FeatureDetailBenefits
A/B TestingAllow game makers to deploy new functionality to subset of playersExperiment with new features
AccountsAllow player account managementAllows players to safely sign-in for a customized user experience
AdminUI for game commands and cheatsCreate custom commands to ease the testing of all aspects of your prototype
AnalyticsAllow game maker to track player behaviorImmediate, out of the box knowledge of what players are doing in the game
AnnouncementsAllow player to manage announcementsGame makers can try out new ways to communicate with the players
ChatAllow players to communicate in-gamePlayers collaborate and discuss strategies during cooperation and trade messages during competition
Cloud SaveAllow player to store progressEasily store player progress through the game
ConnectivityIndicates status of network connection availabilityElegantly handle unstable internet
ContentAllow game maker to store project-specific dataExternalize core game data for collaboration & updates
CurrencyUI for virtual currencyImmediate, out of the box currency (e.g. gold / gems). Players earn & spend
EventsAllow game maker to set up a one-time competitionCreate a significant multiplier effect on player engagement with a one-time competition between players
GroupsAllow players to create groups and interact in real-timeCreate shared goals between players and functionality to collaborate (e.g. quests)
InventoryAllow player to manage inventoryGame makers can gift and reward items to players, or require an item for game progress (E.g. lock-and-key puzzles)
LeaderboardsAllow player to manage leaderboardImmediate, out of the box social and competitive aspects to your game or game feature
MailAllows players to manage in-game mailImmediate, out of the box social and competitive aspects to your game or game feature
MicroservicesCreate and deploy your own code which we hostIncrease security and integrate with server-side APIs
MultiplayerAllow game makers to create multi-user experiencesCreate competitive and cooperative experiences with 2+ players
NotificationsAllow games to send and receive messages through subscriptions.Increase retention and keep players engaged
SkinningAllow game maker to customize appearance of UIQuickly modify the look and feel of the user experience. Experiment and A/B test
StatsAllow game maker to store player-specific dataEasily store player attributes through the game
StoreAllow player to shopCreate innovative meta-game loops and incentive plans
TournamentsAllow game maker to set up a recurring tournamentCreate a significant multiplier effect on player engagement with a recurring competition between players

Beamable Tool Windows

Each Tool Window allows game makers to develop with and maintain the Beamable Features in the game project.

Tool WindowDetail
Configuration ManagerThe game configuration administration
Content ManagerThe content item administration
LoginThe game maker account administration
Microservices ManagerThe microservices administration
Theme ManagerAllow game maker to customize appearance of UI
ToolboxThe drag & drop palette of Beamable features
PortalThe web-based project administration

Learning Resources

These learning resources provide a better way to build live games in Unity.