ARIN FROIDL| Reporter

From January 26-28, web and game designers all over the world got together at 700 different locations for the Global Game Jam.

In St. Louis, the jam takes place at University of Missouri-St. Louis, and with over 300 people attending the jam, it was the ninth largest in the world.

Lindenwood student Tommy Holstein is an interactive media and web design major who attended the jam for one of his classes.

With only 48 hours, Tommy and his 2 fellow team members had to design and produce a game inspired by the theme “transmission.”

While other teams created games about cars or spreading diseases, the game Tommy and his team designed focused on the idea of transmitting Morse code. The player uses Morse code to direct the character through the game and fight off enemies.

“It was not fun by any stretch of the imagination,” Holstein said about the game. “…but it taught me a lot about the process of making games and really just the creative process in general.”

Holstein was the only artist on his team, so he designed the characters, levels, and all animations required for the game.

Many of the attendees stay the weekend at the jam, but Holstein opted to drive home and sleep in his bed.

“Some people do pull all-nighters and work the straight 48-hours,” said Holstein. “There were some impressive games.”

Holstein and his team worked from around 9am to 6pm or later each day. On the final day of the jam, each team presented their games.

Holstein’s favorite part of the jam was meeting the people in the same field as him.

“I don’t have any connections with the game development community here,” he said. “Actually getting to work on a project with them [the fellow designers] so that we have that and in the future might be able to collaborate again, that was really cool.”

Because there isn’t a license on Holstein’s game, it is not available to the public to be played. Visit the St. Louis Global Game Jam’s website to see videos of the games from the jam being played.