The 12th annual Global Game Jam went entirely online this year from January 27-31 with 28,825 amateur, hobbyist and professional game developers from 104 countries cooperating to create games under the umbrella of this year’s theme: Lost & Found. In total, 6,383 original game designs emerged from 585 virtual sites around the world with the top combined participation sites in Shanghai, New York, Curitiba, Istanbul and Cairo.
After last year’s in-person event, the pandemic really started to unfold and we were concerned that we wouldn’t even be able to hold the Global Game Jam in 2021.
But after discussions with our community, we were really driven to find a solution and pivot to the online format this year. The tremendous turnout for the event made all of the effort worth it, and we are so pleased that even in varying degrees of lockdown throughout the world we were able to bring so many people together for a weekend of creativity, collaboration, community and fun.
Kate Edwards, Executive Director of Global Game Jam
Headline sponsor, Core, added to the excitement of this year’s Global Game Jam with a contest for games developed using its groundbreaking new platform for creating and playing games utilizing the Unreal engine. Core provides players with an endless universe of games to play and worlds to explore, designed by a global community of creators. Core is a radically accessible game construction kit and social game-playing platform, all-in-one. In total, 113 games were created for the Core Diversifier, with a prize pool up for grabs of $10,000 spread across a selection of winners in different categories.
Global Game Jam 2021 winners
- Hidden Secrets by Burnzie
- Lost Toys by NANIMOON and JollyTopple
- Garden of the Lost Lands by Team DocBdesign
- Lost & Found: Blind & See by Tomkun and Rinvy Fan
- Sockit Enterprise by Grunlock
- Drunk Race by Team Kirch
- Island of Lost Words by randomphantom
- Lost in the Dungeon RPG by exUnity
- Death Farm by LittleCreator
- Dignity by mert0706
For more info on the Core Diversifier winners, please visit the Manticore Games blog HERE.
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