It all started with a Time Machine.
As a crowd gathered on Day 1 of the Indie galactic Space Jam on Friday, the buzz quieted as the bay door rose slowly.
The Vu Studios space in South Orlando seemed made for a spectacle like this.
As the door opened, curious attendees looked on, took their phones out and waited.
Soon, they were to document the moment as Kunal Patel, the co-organizer and face of Indienomicon, rode in on a rebuilt replica of the car made famous in the movie “Back to the Future.”
The stunt was meant to kick off what has become a 10-year-old event in a memorable way.
“It’s important to do big things that make memories,” Patel said. “For Indienomicon, we care about relationships. We care about highlighting our region. To establish a core memory or create a little landmark in your memories was really important. So we did something big, something fun.”
The strategy seemed to work, as the crowd kept its attention on Patel as he launched the weekend-long hackathon.
Hackathons: explained
Across three days, nine teams created games and other tech products that could help space industry businesses in their training methods.
One small team worked on a virtual reality trainer that gamified education.
In another, the player controlled a small astronaut who was tasked to build a facility on Mars.
Still another built a game called “Canaveral, We Have A Problem,” a couch co-op experience that put two players together to avert disaster by landing on the surface of an asteroid in VR and shutting it down.
The “Canaveral” team certainly had its obstacles.
However, the team made up of mostly Indienomicon veterans worked to build a solution, which pushed them to the weekend’s top prize of $2,500.
“You have to rally together,” said Juan Rivera, who is a media design instructor at Orange County Library System. “We figure out the challenges and have to work together.”
Starlight Sweetheart, a puzzle game that uses constellations to guide a lost traveler home, finished in third to take home $500.
The facility-building game above, “Martian Mania,” took home second place and $1,500.
‘Tech to build community’
“They are using tech to build community,” said Robert Katz, one of the event’s judges. “There are people here that build friendships here. They build teams, they build companies here.”
Typical of a game jam, teams have a specific period of time – in this case, 48 hours – to build a team, build a game and present it to judges.
Nicholas Drobes’ pitched his game, “Daring Descent,” an arcade-style space landing mission game he then built with his nine-person team.
The space jam was his second in-person jam.
Drobes said the tight window during which you need to build the game almost by nature enhances your skillsets.
“There’s no better way to network and hone your skills,” he said. “If necessity is the mother of invention, a 48-hour timeframe is the mother of all necessities. It inspires you to concrete your solutions and get things done.”
Willow Rachels has pretty much made it a hobby to hit up game jams in Orlando.
After attending her first about a year ago, she has returned constantly, with the space jam being her sixth.
For Rachels, it was about continued growth in her career and game-building expertise. She attended her first because she wanted to learn how to make a game.
She returned because she could not learn everything in one weekend, she said.
“I kept coming back and learning more,” she said. “There is no better way than learning on the fly in a weekend how to make something.”
As the doors of the DeLorean flopped open, Kunal Patel stepped out to meet the people who would build for the weekend.
He had in his hand a hot-pink hoverboard, another timeless relic from the hit classic movie.
After a frantic moment of searching for the microphone, Patel settled in and playfully acknowledged that his customary tardiness to show openings required him to hire a time machine, just in case.
But after some playful opening remarks, he turned his attention to the weekend ahead and took a more serious tone.
“We are here with a very vibrant community here in Orlando now,” he said. “We have had studios form. We have had friendships form. We have had a lot of successes happen.”
After a quick shift back into time-traveler mode, Patel finished it with a quick logistics check. Patel has become quite adept at balancing technical skills with fun, sometimes borderline over-the-top presentation skills.
He said that is an important element in making sure people of all levels are comfortable at game jams.
“When you’re in technology, you’re not always the most bubbly, you’re not always the person on stage,” said Patel, who admitted he was once “painfully shy.” “It only happened through putting myself through situations where I had to speak. Through that, things changed and opportunities came.”