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Counterspell


What is Counterspell?

Counterspell was a global game jam hosted by Hack Club in over 50 cities! There were over 1,500 participants and more than 600 games were submitted.

The purpose was to get teens to meet each other and learn how to create something amazing. The theme was "You are your own worst enemy" and it was really interesting to see everyone's interpretation of that. There were 24 and 12 hour events, unfortunately, ours was only 12 hours, but it was still great.

Making the Team

I woke up at 5:00AM on Nov 23rd, because it was pretty far away, but the day still went really well. We got some Counterspell T-Shirts (I didn't wear it because it was super cold that day).

Then, I sat down and waited for Hayden. I've never met him, but we decided to team up on a whim through the Discord server. When he got there, we started talking, and then we saw Ayan and Colin. We'd never met either of them but we decided to ask them to join, so we had a full team.

Ayan and I bonded really quickly, at first because we had the same name, but then we realized we had a lot more in common.

We both built our PCs that summer, we both have mechanical keyboards, we both prefer Android over iOS, and so much more! I could quickly tell that this was going to be a great team.

Theme Reveal

At this point in time, we didn't know the theme, but we were joking around with the idea of making a gambling game.

When the theme was announced at the opening ceremony, we were ecstatic! Gambling fits PERFECTLY with the idea that you are your own enemy. After all, you can't stop gambling, but the more you do, the deeper of a hole you dig for yourself.

Dividing the Work

After we had the theme, we had to make an idea. So along the lines of gambling, we all wrote down a few ideas on a piece of paper and worked together to formulate the perfect game. Hayden suggested Plinko, which we thought would be good, especially considering the 12 hours we have together.

Now, Colin wanted to use Godot and we all agreed that we should. After all, the rest of us don't have much experience with game jams (other than Ayan) and Colin was comfortable in Godot.

Then, we quickly realized that we couldn't all work on the same project as the other person, otherwise it would overwrite someone's progress. So, Colin naturally became the programmer, which left Ayan and me with no jobs. Then, Ayan remembered that he can make music, so that's what he did, creating 7 custom original soundtracks for this game based on the storyline. Hayden said he'd do the art (which ISN'T MS Paint by the way) so I was the only one left with nothing else to do.

I thought for a while, but decided I'll start writing the README and instructions for the game while I think. That's when I started writing a bit of a backstory, and before you knew it, I had become the storyteller. My job was essentially the creative vision behind the game, which dictated the music and art style. This meant I had to work closely with everyone, and had to manage the team in order to make the game as cohesive as possible.

Actually working

When it came to actually working, it was really interesting. Everyone had their laptops (except me, with my tablet remoting into my desktop) and it was a fairly small table, so were were all close to each other. I was writing the storyline and dialogue.

Every once in a while, I would tell Ayan and Hayden what I added, so they knew what to make next, and they would occasionally ask me to review their work to make sure it all flowed together. Colin used some placeholder assets for a while, until Hayden had enough art made to start adding it to the game.

We also decided that we wanted to record the voicelines, not just have them appear on screen. So I decided that Hayden should be the voice actor for the main character and the intro narrator, and I ended up being the voice actor for the devil, and the end narrator. When Hayden was done working, he started scouting other teams to see how far along everyone was (hint: everyone, including us, needed more time).

Although I was done with my storyline fairly quickly (maybe a few hours after lunch), my work wasn't over. The team still needed me to explain the storyline for them. Sure, they could've read it themselves, but that would mean spending more time, a resource we didn't have, and could also lead to inconsistencies throughout the game. So my work never ended. (Well, near the end it did when Colin was rushing to implement the million things we kept on adding, but I was on snack + clean-up duty for our table then).

Presenting

After a long 12 hours, with the occasional food break and guest speaker, it was time to submit our projects. Thankfully, we were assured that we could work on the game afterwards for the global submission. After a few technical difficulties, we got the presentation working, and I think it went well.

I started by explaining the game, seeing as I knew the story the best. Then, I passed the mic to Colin, who needed a bit of encouragement to get started, but he did great, explaining how he used Godot to make the game. Next, Ayan explained his many OSTs, and Hayden talked about his NOT MS Paint art. Overall, we had a great presentation, that you can see over here.

Global Submissions

It was December 1st, 2024. We had a week to perfect our game, and we had finally gotten it to where we wanted it. Colin submitted the submission form at 10:31PM, and we thought that would be it. We didn't really expect to win anything, especially considering we only got 5th place out of 9 teams, but we were hopeful.

Then, on December 15th, 9:23PM, I got an email while I was coming home from a party. I opened it and it said that the global voting form is open. I thought, "cool, lemme send this to the team" and that was about it.

That's when Colin told me that we were in the top 10. I didn't believe it, so I opened the voting form right then and there. I couldn't believe it, our game actually got in the top 10!! I was so excited that I ran home, and recorded a video, still in my shirt from the party.

Global Results

This was it. It's January 10th, 2025 and it's 4:20PM. We submitted the game over a month ago and it was time to see what happened. This time, I didn't wanna send it and open it later, I wanted to see the email for myself. I saw the first place winner, Remedy Renemy.

I remembered voting for them, but I also was feeling nervous. "What if we don't get 2nd place? We were so close and we failed." Then I scrolled down and saw a bright red thumbnail. It was familiar, it said "Bets and Regrets". We did it! We actually won 2nd place!

This was a huge feat for us. We were 4 guys who met for the first time, decided to make a fun little game, and actually got 2nd place out of 600 games and 1,500 people! I actually didn't believe it at first but then Sofia, the organizer for Counterspell messaged us on Slack, congratulating us for our achievement, and asking for our addresses to send the Bambu Lab A1 Minis to. That was it! We actually did it!. However, there were only 3 printers (as was mentioned at the start of the event) and 4 of us. Hayden was gracious enough to say no to the printer so we all got printers. Colin has another one now, Ayan who needed one for so long got one, and I, who had a printer but returned it (it was a reliability nightmare), also got one.

For those of you who are wondering, the first place prize is an all expenses paid trip to where ever the next Hack Club game jam is. (A lot of them aren't global). And now, we wait. Bambu is really back ordered due to the holiday season, so we're gonna need to wait till March at the earliest to get our printers, we're super exited though!