SideFX is proud to announce

the Houdini Game Jam WINNERS!

SideFX recently held its first ever game jam where participants had one week to use Houdini to build games based on the theme “Don’t Panic!” Over 80 people game jammed, either in teams or alone, to create 47 fun and unique games. All of the games made during the game jam can be viewed (including information about how Houdini was used), downloaded, and played for free on the Houdini Game Jam submissions page on Itch.

SUBMISSIONS ON ITCH

Game Jam Reel

The game submissions were played by a panel of Houdini, 3D art, and game dev professionals who rated the games based on the categories of art & animation, sounds & music, gameplay & fun factor, use of the theme, and use of Houdini. The ratings were calculated by Itch and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners were decided based on the overall scores.

RULES & PRIZE LIST

FIRST PLACE

TOTALY UNEXPECTED SAFETY DRILL

By David Ville and Katia Orozco

In Totally Unexpected Safety Drill the player must place directional pawns to guide the AI characters away from the approaching fire and towards the exit. The goal is to save as many people as possible, the ability to both slow down and speed up time adds some strategy. The gameplay gives the player a feeling of panic and the characters will also panic if they get too close to the fire.

DOWNLOAD AND PLAY

From the developers, “We developed a Houdini Tool to create automatic environment buildings, generating the floor, rooms, rooms separation, doors and floor holes only using Unity cubes. The doors are automatically calculated based on the distance between the internal walls. The flames were modeled in Houdini, we focused on the mesh, and they have a special vertex color that is used for the Shader and Material in Unity. The smoke was also modeled in Houdini.”

PRIZEs

NOTE: In addition to the previously announced prizes, the developers of Totally Unexpected Safety Drill will also be receiving a bonus prize of Unity Pro licenses!

SECOND PLACE

Panic shopper!

By Joakim Olsson, Erik Östsjö, Adrian Björkerud, Gustav Alexandersson, and Sebastian Grape

In Panic Shopper! the player must navigate a grocery store to find items on a shopping list and purchase them before time runs out. A combination of dynamic physics and FPS gameplay provide a wacky gaming experience. The time limit and frantic search for food items works well for the game jam’s theme of “Don’t Panic!”.

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From the developers, “We used Houdini for asset generation, level layout, asset propping, texture generation for procedural groceries, character and asset modelling. All assets, except a few food products and main menu city from some content packs, were made in Houdini. PDG was used to generate food labels and packaging. The tools were both used offline, as well as in editor using Houdini Engine.”

PRIZEs

THIRD PLACE

Run Chicken, run!

By Brian Hill

Run Chicken, Run! is an endless runner game where the player controls a chicken trying to escape from it’s farm while being pursued by a giant robot farmhand. The action is fast paced and takes place across multiple zones with no room for error. The chasing enemy and increasing speed make the game a panic-filled experience.

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From the developer, “Houdini was used to create 3 main HDAs for use in Unreal Engine via the Houdini Engine plugin: Ground planes, Fences, & Bridges. The game is a random endless runner, so I wanted some tools that would allow me to quickly build variations of my base models in Unreal.

The ground HDA was used to create all of the grounding surfaces in the game, some with hills, tire-grooves, and mild displacement.
The fence HDA allowed me to quickly place fencing around each of the animal pens and along the sides of the road. I utilized the ability to edit my input curve dynamically in Unreal so I could build each fence "on-the-fly" with my full scene in place.
The bridge HDA was the most useful of all of them. It allowed me to quickly build a bridge between any two points in my Unreal scene and then adjust the sag, support ropes, board randomization, etc.

In addition to the custom HDAs, I also utilized the Game Jam Starter Kit's "Boolean Edge Damage" HDA to help generate the cliffs and columns in the game.”

PRIZEs