<![CDATA[Kotaku: crispy gamer]]> http://tags.kotaku.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/kotaku.com.png <![CDATA[Kotaku: crispy gamer]]> http://kotaku.com/tag/crispygamer http://kotaku.com/tag/crispygamer <![CDATA[You Could Have Won $2,500 If You Were Better Than These Guys]]> The good thing about the second annual Bay Area Game Jam's make-a-game-in-4824-hours contest is you get free games the day after the contest ends.

The grand prize of $2,500 went to Daniel Bryner, Bradley Johnson and Chris Webb who managed to create Lava Ball on Wild Pocket's new 3D engine. How they did this with only so much coffee and cookies available at the event is nothing short of gross admirable dedication.

Lava Ball has players rolling a metal ball using W, A, S, D keys to move across bouncing platforms that rocket your ball over a pit of lava. It's actually pretty addictive, if you can get Wild Pocket's site to stop eating your browser long enough to try it.

The other two entries that scored prizes didn't seem to have it as together as Lava Ball, which is probably why they didn't win the grand prize. Save the Boy is a Boom Blox-ish clone that has spiffy music and fugly character models while Bumper Bash! has the most annoying music ever and the simplest gameplay.

And if just now you're thinking "Wow, some of the winning games look like crap," I'd like to see you do better in 48 24 hours. No, seriously, I would.

Check 'em out, if you dare. Fair warning that the game hosting site doesn't seem to like Firefox.

My bad, the whole event is 48 hours, the duration for coding your game is 24.

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<![CDATA[Bay Area Game Jam Rocks My Weekend]]> This weekend, Wild Pockets, Crispy Gamer and Microsoft are teaming up to host Bay Area Game Jam – a 24-hour game development competition at the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View, California.

Contestants have to use Wild Pockets' 3D web-based game engine and the fine print on the contest rules specifies that this is a team event and every team must have at least one programmer on it. The grand price is $2,500 and to top it all off, contestants get to keep the IP (but not absolute distribution rights).

But the real draw, especially for the peanut gallery members of the gaming press is a Saturday night concert featuring the OneUps and Megas. I think this will be the "Jam" portion of the weekend.

Check out event details here.

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