To mark the 150th anniversary of the Société française de Physique, Ikigai Games and ScienceXGames co-organized a Scientific Game Jam on the theme of physics, from March 31 to April 2, 2023. The concept was to bring together game designers, programmers, graphic designers, sound designers and physicists to create a video game based on the latter's thesis.
Weekend schedule
The jam took place on the 45th floor of the Montparnasse Tower in Paris over 3 days, with the first day devoted to presentation and constitution of the 5 teams. Throughout the weekend, 7 mentors helped the participants to realize their projects.
We're keen to promote a world of video games that includes good working conditions, caring and respectful relationships between workers and the production of quality games. For this jam, we therefore offered catered meals, and set up the necessary framework so as not to resort to crunching or competition. Finally, the games developed were all playable by the end of the weekend.
The jury
The jury was selected to represent the three main thrusts of this game jam: science, education and video games. It was made up of people from the organizers (ScienceXGames, Ikigai, Mainbot) and from academia (University of Paris), the video game industry (Ubisoft) and education (S-Cube).
Les jeux
Flowtex, a game of confrontation with positive and negative vortexes. - User-friendliness award
Magne-toi le Khi, ulatformer on the various forms of magnetism. - Grand Jury Prize
Inspecteur Rayton, an investigative game involving the identification of stones using various scientific methods such as spectroscopy. - SFP Award
Starlight Expedition, a tetris-like game revolving around the manufacture of solar panels. - Gameplay Award
Neutriscore, space-invader-like with neutrinos. - Fermi Award
The awards ceremony
The games produced were of very high quality, and were praised by the jury at the awards ceremony held online on April 12, during a joint evening with the Lyon and Online editions. At the end of the evening, the Public's Favourite was also awarded from among the games from the various jams.
Stream of games produced
The games were streamed following the jam by several streamers, including Canard PC on its Twitch channel.