tinyware - The 2025 Experience

Hello everyone! Welcome to the final blog post of the '24 - '25 academic year! We've just wrapped up tinyware, VGDC's 48 hour in person game jam. To take your mind off of the impending approach of finals week, we took the time to speak to as many teams as possible throughout the jam and gathered their thoughts on the whole experience!

Team Homunculus brainstorming during day one of tinyware.

Team Weapons of Mass Destruction: "Honestly, I'm feeling good. I made good progress, so things are looking a little better than I anticipated. I had an idea coming in, and it's coming together well. I think I'll be proud of how this went."

Team Weapons of Mass Destruction: "I'm really excited! This is actually my first game jam, so I'm trying really hard to do well."

Team AAAA: "I mean, 48 hours is such a short amount of time, and this is only the second game that I've ever attempted to make. But I think that the amount of ideas that we've brainstormed so far makes me pretty confident that we can finish the game on time."

Team AAAA: "I'm pretty confident in our ability to make a minimum viable product that's going to be fun. Our idea is there, and we already have our core features implemented. To really flesh out the basic things that we need is going to take very little work, so I'm confident that we can do it."

Team Homunculus: "I think we're cooking."

tinyware participants sharing a toast late into day two.

Team Chase's Car Door: "I'm feeling great. Our project is going well, we made good progress. I'm very confident in it. It's definitely a bit late, and I should probably get to bed, but you know VGDC — you can't not stay up until absurd hours."

Nick Mitroff (Solo): "Honestly, my game is looking really good. I'm actually proud of it right now."

Nick Mitroff: "I was trying to implement a custom physics system for my game, but the player kept clipping into walls. I ended up just reworking the game so the player didn't collide with walls at all, and it seems to have worked out."

Team VP Finance: "I'm tired. We started around 6:30 p.m. the first day and then stayed until like, 3:40 a.m.? That was about nine hours, almost ten. Today, we worked from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. So we've been working for thirteen hours."

Team VP Finance: "In total, we've worked for about 24 hours — that's crazy. Progress is going okay, we got a minimum viable product done, so we're almost there."

Team VP Finance: "We've only gotten this far because my teammate is amazing. He's the best. Only fellow treasurers could cook up a game like this."

Team Nano / Goldfish Pride late into day three of tinyware.

Team Homunculus: "I think our team is doing great. We've made a lot of progress. I'm really proud of how much we've been able to accomplish in such a short amount of time. I'm really looking forward to seeing how our game turns out."

Team MIT: "There've been many, many, many problems. We've had minimal success for most of the jam. But we're pulling through, and we're cooking right now. We're in a good spot, the game should be finished in about an hour and a half."

Team MIT: "We had to redesign our whole game, like, thirty hours into this forty-eight hour game jam. It was not great. But, we're going to pull through, one hundred percent."

Audience reactions to the tinyware showcase presentations.

Ethan Carter (Solo): "It was an idea that I had been sitting on for a while. The mechanic of the quantum objects was heavily inspired by a game called Outer Wilds. You should totally play it, it's an awesome game."

Ethan Carter: "When I heard the theme, I started thinking about it again, and the gears in my head just started turning. I thought, what if you're looking at something, and when you look back at it again, things change?'

Ethan Carter: "The development process was a lot of fun. It's very stressful, but I love the grind. I'm really happy to have won the award. Frankly, there were a lot of awesome games."

Ethan Carter: "I love this club. It's awesome. I'm really glad that I got to be a part of this event."

Thank you to everyone who agreed to speak for the blog during tinyware, we really appreciate that you took the time to in the middle of such a busy event. We'd also like to thank Red Bull for sponsoring the event!

Most importantly, we at VGDC would like to thank everyone in the community for helping us make this such an amazing year. Thank you all for reading, we hope to see you again in the fall!