For August the theme for the Dublin One Game a Month group was “Give Up”, a topic near and dear to my... slightly malfunctioning head.

I had written a little bit in the past about my then recent discovery and self-diagnosis of Social Anxiety Disorder [in brief: Social Anxiety can be considered the irrational fear of public embarrassment/being judged in a negative way way. Everyone experiences this to one degree or another, which is perfectly normal. It is when it becomes persistent, affecting day-to-day life over a long period that it gets classed as a Disorder; anxiety over anticipation of social interactions becomes debilitating]. I've since had that diagnosis confirmed, been prescribed medication to help, albeit the smallest of doses, and come to realise just how much I've allowed it to take such a firm grip of my life. It has affected my capacity to work (directly and via a knock-on impact on self-confidence in my abilities), I've allowed friendships to evaporate and it generally has made me stall in many regards. Oh, woe is me, etc. etc.

This is something I obviously want to change, although irrational fears are not always so obliging. I figure one of the best ways to start is to rob it of one of its most potent weapons, the reluctance to even acknowledge its existence to others. So when the theme of “Give Up” came around, I saw this as a chance to create a game featuring Social Anxiety, at least in part. I wanted to have a character that can become so overcome by anxiety that they have to quit that game and run away, thereby achieving a “hollow victory”; they feel the relief of avoiding their fears but ashamed of having run from them (thematically at least) and therefore causing the other players to fail at their group task. A slightly superficial representation, but enough to get the point across and give the player a taste of the experience.

So along the lines of “write what you know”, I decided to make a game called “Game Jam”; a cooperative tabletop game where the players have to collectively complete their game projects before the end of the day. But some of the players could be playing for their own personal goals that could prevent the group from winning, with different character types having different types of goals, one of which being the Socially Anxious player type.


This wasn't just a #1GAM game, I was also doing it as part of a game design workshop I was taking part in. So that and the fact that this was a somewhat personal project, I kinda went all out on this one. A lot of coloured paper and printing and gluing to mounting board and cutting, so much cutting, hundreds of tiny pieces worth of cutting (and one finger). If nothing else, it looks pretty.

It'd been half played in the workshop without characters and goals, and it felt a bit stale (to be expected) and half played, at the #1GAM meetup at dubLUDO, with everything more or less in place. There the players seemed to like it, pausing only to go play some Johann Sebastian Joust, which ended up taking so much time - because it was so much damn fun! - so we never got back to the game. What was noticed was they the players were rapidly approaching a point of stalemate where it would have been harder to make progress. So changes I'd probably make would be to accelerate advancement in the later half of the game, which would also simulate the mad rush near the end of an actual game jam to get your game finished.

But there probably won't be much more work done on it; August and workshops are over, so it's on to other things. What I'll likely do is make a few tweaks at some point and bring it along to the next Dublin game jam event and see if anyone is interested in having a go.

Here's the rule sheet I had typed up for the game.

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You are attending a 24(?)hr game jam event

Your goal as a group is for everyone to complete their game project before the end of the day (one turn for each hour of the event)

At the beginning of the game each player blindly selects:
A skill point counter for each of the 4 skills, Design, Code, Art & Audio.
A Charisma counter
A game board
A character sheet
A Goal card

At the beginning of each turn players choose to 'work' one of their four skills, taking a number of skill tokens for that skill equal to their skill points plus any modifiers.

They then all select turn counters from the bag; these will indicate the play order for that turn.

On their turn, a player can choose to apply their skill tokens to their game board or trade them to another player who has not yet taken their turn.

If a players Charisma score is at least 2 greater than the Charisma score of another player, then they can force that other player to trade, otherwise the other player has the option to refuse to trade.
If players trade, then both players will have used their turn (returning their turn counters to the bag).
After trading the players apply the received tokens directly to their game

When applying a token to a game, if a highlighted marker is filled, then the player will take a chance card and follow its directions.
If a chance card makes the player miss their next turn, then their current turn ends (cannot take additional chance cards)

Each skill bar on a game card has two Polish markers. These can only be filled by obtaining Feedback from another player. This requires the player to trade with another player, receiving the appropriate skill tokens and then changing them for Star tokens.

Some players will have received Personal Goal cards, this allows them to win the game for themselves, instead of the group. A player can 'win' a personal victory by fulfilling the indicated requirements on their Character card.

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