Prompt: High Tempo // 18th - 25th August 2024
Posted on 21/10/24On October 4th 1957 the Soviet Union launched the first Sattelite, the Sputnik, into Orbit. In response, the Institutions of the United States of America honed their focus on scientific advancement in order to not lose the Space Race against the Communist Russians and in turn the Cold War. A Breakthrough in Information Sharing was crucial in order to make this essential element of Empire more robust against attack. This resulted in an "intergalactic network of computers" the Arpanet. In 1991 Cern scientist "Sir" Tim Berners-Lee revolutionised this system and turned it from a network of direct communication of computers to a web of accessible information for all computers: the World Wide Web.
On the 25th of August 2024 the digital witchcircle "Stern32" has decided that they are above these worldshattering developments, and decided to hangout in a park to "touch grass" and show each other the art they've made in the first ever STERN32 ART JAM !!
Now we want to return to reason and plug into the God that is the Internet to share these things we've made!
The Art Jam started on the 18th of August and lasted a week. The prompt was "High Tempo" ("Hohes Tempo" in German) The prompt was randomly selected from a pool of prompts anonymously compiled by the participants. There were no further rules: Any medium and any constellation of cooperation/solitude for the work!
Mila - flugs
The first thing that popped into my head when I heard the prompt, was "running". So that's what i went with.
Odessa - Turbine
Planes are fast... they have turbines... i decided to make a Noise song that starts to sound kind of like a turbine. I made it in Ableton with the Serum Plugin. I changed the tempo of the Song and used an Arpeggiator on the Serum Synth. After that i put a Grain effect on it. Et voila it sounds unlistenable (I guess that was kind of my goal). Have fun listening to the Soundscape :) car
Emilia - Tandem To Infinity
After ruminating on the theme I pictured a child seeing a tandem drive by for the first time and deducing that every added biker would increase the bike's speed in a linear fashion. That made me fantasize about a 5 or even 10 people tandem...
Also, I had just played Katamari Damacy and really wanted to make a game about progression and not bumping into things. At first I planned to increase both the bike's scale and speed. The player would go from dodging traffic poles to dodging skyscrapers. This turned out to be way too much work and I didn't like the idea of barriers at the edge of my level. So I made the level a globe and the player only gain in speed. The idea of an 8 people tandem racing around a small sphere was a lot of fun immediately and accompanied me in my dreams.
Back to reality: It's been over two years that I touched game development and I'm accordingly rusty. A lot of stuff didn't work out or took way too long to implement. Gamedev, especially games programming, is as much exploratory fun as a cruel game of killing all your darlings and weighing potentials against the cost of commitment. At least that's my experience haha.
⇝ Click here to play it in your browser! ⇜
Update about the endscreen: I won't finish this game
Alex Vanova - Miss Velocita Character Design
"Miss Velocita is a professional high speed biker who can never stand still. If you want to catch her glimpse, you have to match her speed level. Have a nice ride!"
Paul - Hypervelocity
The gameplay is centered on this idea - attacking enemies makes the player perform a combo that ends by launching both themselves and the enemy into the air, which allows for an aerial combo that keeps the enemy launched. The player can also dash into enemies to stay in the air for longer - and defeating an enemy, which can only be done with a dash, refills all dashes (which are normally limited to 3 at a time) and makes the player perform a finisher that propels them forward, leading to a gameplay flow where the player is constantly in the air and slashing and dashing their way forward.
Outside of combat, the dash is used for platforming, as the player can use it to jump over pits, safely pass through obstacles, break objects, or simply go faster.
Most of the art jam was spent making the player character, which is why the game is on the shorter side of things. Of the 7 days, about 5-6 were dedicated to just the player, with the remaining time being spent on building the level and making the enemies. I also wanted to add a boss fight at the end, but that turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, so the game ends with a cutscene.
In the end, even if I wasn't able to finish the game, I am still satisfied with what I accomplished - my biggest priority was that the movement, controls and combat feel satisfying and responsive, as this was kind of an issue in my previous games, and I'd say Hypervelocity is a big improvement in that regard. Even an unfinished project is a good learning experience!
Moth - Circuit
Hohes Tempo / High Tempo is a very versatile prompt that fits well with the medium of Animation, itself being a series of images flickering through at a high tempo. I only begun working on this project halfway through the art jam week, but I managed to finish it (in the three days)!
With this short film I wanted to bring attention or maybe mindfulness? to electricity. It's a very common part of our lives nowadays and yet when I actually pay attention to it, it seems like magic to me! Yes, it is logical and you can figure it out, but it somehow feels like a miracle. For the prompt I decided to highlight that electricity is fast (duh) but play that against our human perception. Even though the electrons are super duper speedy, the effects that we perceive or the devices that these insanely fast particles are powering can feel sooo slow. Furthermore I wanted to make a point that the magic of electricity is only so good as we use it. The infrastructure and devices that are needed to make use of lecky are very real and only so good as we make them. This is important to remember. Faulty or inefficient devices can sap away energy that is made through hard sacrifice/violence to our planet and our ecosystems. We need to stay mindful of the realness of electricity and not get carried away by its magic. We need to be aware that the way we use this energy is not sustainable and we need to reduce our usage. I also just wanted to have a little gag at the end. I hope you enjoy ^^
David - kraxler
kraxler is a game about bugs and gardening! It is the first game I made in Godot, so I had to cut alot of corners. you can download the windows version here. just be aware that the game takes a really long time to start on some Windows 11 PCs and idk why.
The first idea I had was wayyy out of scope and sent me down a huge rabbithole. Sooo I went on a lot of walks, starred at the ground alot, looked at bugs - all that CRAP! I'll be honest, I just wanted to make a game about bugs and plants and the theme came sort of afterwards :)
Felix - High Tempo
I decided to do a song for this. I'll be honest, the first minute or so is just churchbells which are not particularly fast and have nothing to do with the theme. But i really liked the way they sounded! I also never managed to finish the song. I hope you like what you hear anyway!