Well… kind of. Every year at the Humble Bundle Mojam, the developers at Mojang have a little friendly competition. Each group is challenged to make a quick game over the duration about sixty hours, then they pit each game against the others in a magical death match that results in shiny, new, (hopefully great) games just for you!
This year, five or six other companies are getting involved:
Since Mojang traditionally splits into two teams for the Mojam competition, we can expect seven or eight quirky, entertaining bundles of joy delivered straight to the internet next week. If you donate to one of two charities backed by Mojang, you get to play. If you donate more than the expected amount, you can be entered into exclusive raffles (the prizes of which are yet unknown).
But here’s the really, really cool part (besides the fact that proceeds go directly to charity). Each developer gets two keywords from which to draw inspiration for the games.
There’s a neat little survey on Mojang’s blog article detailing the events of Mojam. “Pick TWO words to help inspire our Mojang creations! We’ll randomly pick from the highest-voted suggestions.”
The entire list of words is a little bizarre, but it’s really interesting to think how they might come together to form a game. For instance, the words I voted for were ‘winter’ and ‘insanity.’ I’m definitely hoping for a stark psychological horror game set in the wilds north of Winterfell.
Yeah, it’s highly unlikely that those two words will be chosen together in tandem for one game, but I think the idea is really neat regardless. It’s a pretty well-regarded writer’s challenge–give somebody two prompts and make something from them–so I’m eagerly hoping that we’ll help inspire a handful of entertaining games.
If you follow Mojang’s blog, they’ll release more information as Mojam comes to a close, including the results of the keyword poll and an “exclusive livestream” of the event.
