Texas A&M Hosts Biggest ‘Chillennium’ Yet, 12 Universities Participating

College students from universities around the nation converged on the Texas A&M campus for the “Chillennium 2016” game jam, a competition where participants have 48 hours to design a video game from scratch, given only a theme from which to begin.

This is the third year Texas A&M’s Department of Visualization has hosted the event, which was started by students in the College of Architecture’s Live Lab. Nearly 250 students competed, making it the largest Chillennium to date, according to Live Lab Director André Thomas.

In addition to Aggies, students from schools such as Ohio State, Kansas State, University of Houston, University of Texas-Dallas, and West Virginia University, among others, competed.

Once the theme is announced, competitors attempt to design a game portraying the theme in the game genre of their choice including first-person shooter, action-adventure or role-playing, for example.

This year’s theme was “foofaraw,” which means “a great deal of fuss or attention given to a minor matter.”

Texas A&M teams won numerous awards, including second- and third-best overall, as well as special recognitions for design, art, programming and sound.

First place went to a team from the University of Texas at Dallas for their game called “Don’t Rock the Boat,” where the player is a server on a cruise ship in rough seas who must keep thirsty passengers refreshed despite dangerous working conditions. The game can be downloaded and played here.

The remaining games from Chillennium 2016 may be played at https://itch.io/jam/chillennium/entries.

Cameron Coker, a graduate student of Fine Arts in Visualization and one of the Chillennium’s founders, says he hopes the event continues to grow each year, and that, combined with the university’s video game design program, will make Texas A&M the nation’s “mecca” for video game design education.

Scroll down to see this year’s top three winning teams.