Gaming Hackathon Paris

I am on the train now, on my way back from an intense three-day gaming hackathon.

We started Friday at 10:00 with a short kickoff. From there 17 teams went straight to the keyboards. The goal was to build a game until Sunday 8:00.

I joined a group of AI and Visual Computing Master students who knew each other from uni.

Given the guys' background and goal of making as much use as possible from the event, the resources, and mentors, I wasn't surprised to wake up to a finished research paper draft on Saturday morning that compared different AI models in figuring out paths from visual and textual representations. However, that alone of course wouldn't help us in making a great game. Until Saturday 16:00, we were giving our best to build a game based on the Unity game engine. At that point, we realized, that we would not be able to implement enough of the game's core mechanisms and would end up with something barely playable.

So we put our heads together and decided to go with something simpler but more fun. The idea came from an Italian TV show in which two players describe a word to a third player. The key limitation is, that the describing players only say one word at a time and can't say the word itself.

Here is the game we ended up with: https://www.think-in-sync.com/

The event was set up as a competition. With the game above, we made it into the top 6 out of 17 teams.

Thanks, Alessandro, Sandro, Emiliano, Michael, and Mattia for having me on your team! Hope to see you again!