The Week Long Event Registration Open

Registration is now open!

We are doing a bit of an experiment this time to see if we can increase engagement with this most useful of employability boosting activity. A whole week of jammin' (no g).

It is my pleasure to announce that the magnificent, marvelous, mad, mad, mad, mad, mad, Three Thing Game is a go! For those not in the know, Three Thing Game is a Game Jam where teams of enthusiasts (that’s you people, as well as me and my ‘kind’) gather to challenge themselves to create a game based on 3 random words that they will be given. At the end of the weekend you get to subject your game to a thorough Judging against various criteria like: adherence to the Things, how complete is your game, and how much money you slip the judge discreetly. Over the years teams from all years of study have made some great stuff, some of which has even been published in various app stores. So you should definitely not be discouraged from taking part in your first year. This is an excellent opportunity to put your skills in to practice, to hone your craft. This is also one of those ‘extra-curricular’ activities that help to distinguish you in the eyes of potential employers from the hundreds of other people that will be graduating from here at the same time.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), there are no new videos, but here are some I made earlier.

A bit different

I said that we are going to try something a bit different this time and this is it. We are going to run the game jam over a whole week. It will start at the during the Rather Useful Seminar slot on Wednesday 26th March when we will run the fabulous Three Thinged Bandit once more for word allocation.

You will then have until the following Rather Useful Seminar on Wednesday 2nd April to build your games. You will then present your creations to the Rather Useful Seminar audiences, and hopefully inspiring the next generation of Three Thing Gamers!

Hullumni

As ever, I am very pleased to invite our alumni to come play with us. Many of our former students are Three Thing Game veterans and it would be great to see them again. You are very welcome to come with preformed teams (getting the band back together perhaps) or go stag and see who else comes. Also if you want to have some time to talk to the students in your professional capacity (maybe you want to entice them to your company) then you are welcome to do that also. If you are interested in taking part in any capacity, then please get in touch.

So what do I need to do?

Form teams! Generally speaking, you want to have a maximum of 5 people in your team. Under the pressure of a constrained time period it can be very difficult to integrate the efforts of large numbers of people. Even 5 is pushing it a little. You can register online here: https://forms.office.com/e/mgUegqWJFA

Registration will close on Wednesday 26th March. Please get your registration forms to me before then.

If you would like to take part but can’t form a team then you can go stag and be a team of one (some people have made this work very well before) or you could identify on your form that you would like to be in a team by using “need a team” as the team name on the form. We can then pool you together into teams. Where there is a will there is a way.

itch.io

We are using itch.io for hosting some of the bits and bobs for the games this year. So I have set up a jam site there which is at the end of this link: https://itch.io/jam/three-thing-game-march-2025. Using this site you can host the games that you make, including screenshots, videos, and playable demos etc. This will be neat for disseminating your excellent efforts.

Finding teams

You may already have a team in mind which is fine, but otherwise consider posting to the Hull Games: Bonus Level Discord site. In short it is a place for us to communicate amongst each other about making games, whether you are an artist, programmer, or musician, or anything else really. It is here:

https://discord.gg/QM4turg

When does it end?

The celebration of achievements will take place at 1300 on Wednesday 2nd April. You will have 3 minutes to pitch your game and show a video of your game. The groups should also be prepared to answer questions about their game. This will be to your fellow participants, but also to the general Rather Useful Seminar audience.