In May, Hive hosted its first official Game Jam of 2025: a game development event spanning the entire weekend, where students formed teams and turned their ideas into playable games.
Putting skills into practice
The core studies at Hive mostly cover fundamentals of programming. However, in order to make students as ready as possible for their first employment in the software industry, Hive organizes extracurricular activities to not only broaden their perspective on technologies and existing fields of application, but also to encourage them to put their knowledge and skills to practice.
Game development is a rich multidisciplinary field for which game jams are a great simulation. Participants will practice team work, public speaking, project management, short iterations, game design, copywriting, gathering or creating visual and audio assets, and of course programming.
It is also a shift from the result-oriented school projects, which prescribe almost all the requirements, to working on a project they create from scratch and direct according to their taste. The motivation boost of realizing that they are competent developers, able to bring ideas to life, is a significant contributor to their progress and success as Hivers.
Another excellent side effect of game jams is the way it contributes to individual students' portfolios: any and every small project completed is another brick in their public facing profile, which is a plus in most hiring contexts, and a necessity to enter the game industry.
48 hours of fun
The game jam began with a kick-off on Friday evening. After a quick presentation by the staff, and the theme reveal ("A world worth saving"), the participants were split into random groups and given instruction and some time to break the ice, ideate, brainstorm and eventually produce one or two game pitches. Each team then had a few minutes to present their pitch to the rest of the participants and make it as attractive as possible.
Teams then reformed around game ideas, affinity and interest, and the development work started in earnest.
Students had as usual 24/7 access to the school grounds but were reminded that although it is a great occasion to push themselves, they would greatly benefit from proper eating and sleeping. If Friday evening was mostly for game design, prototypes and iterations on the game concepts, Saturday was the main development day for most teams.
Saturday afternoon, guest speaker Vesa Ylhäinen, senior game designer at Supercell, introduced the students to his work and experience, stayed for a long Q&A, and gave his feedback and advice on the games being made.
Sunday was about finishing to develop the core ideas, freezing features and polishing. The culmination of the weekend was of course the demonstrations, after which participants could judge each other's entries in five categories:
- Best gameplay
- Best writing or setting
- Best original visuals
- Best original sound
- Best game overall
While results were compiled, the happy and exhausted jammers were treated to complimentary pizza. Finally, the award ceremony celebrated the participants' hard work under thunderous applause!
The start of a tradition
Feedback on the event was unanimously positive, with many Hivers - including some who could not make it - asking how often this would be repeated.
Given the excellent benefits of such an event for the school community and student body, the Hive staff has decided to reiterate the experience regularly, at least twice a year, to give as many students as possible the occasion to participate and hone their skills on a fun and practical project.