iGGi Game Jam 2025 and Awards!

iGGi successfully concluded its 11th Game Jam on Friday, and it’s been EPIC!

A total of 9 groups worked on a variety of game types, all based on this year’s theme:

idiom

🔊 /ˈɪdɪəm/

iGGi PGRs appreciated the (in comparison to previous years) extended and therefore more relaxed format of the iGGi GJ 2025; while the the event itself spread over 72 hours, an extra day on either end afforded plenty of socialising between cohorts, and there was ample time for play testing.

A special thank you goes out to the four iGGi Industry Advisory Board members who donated some of their time and who could be contacted online by groups via the iGGi GJ Discord server: A HEARTFELT THANKS !!!

For the iGGi GJ 2025 Awards, participants could assign matching idioms (or twists on existing idioms) to each group. The resulting idioms were then used to label jars (one per group) containing 3D-printed keyboard keys with an “iGGi 2025” engraving (to fit the tab key on a mechanical keyboard) which were given out as prizes on Friday after the presentations.

What's more, as a revelation that came completely unexpectedly to the researchers, the iGGi Game Jam had a far larger-scale secret Surprise Award still up its sleeve thanks to…..

...…SONY Interactive Entertainment !!!!

SONY very generously sponsored the main award – a PS5 !!! – see pictures below showing its enthusiastic reception! - BIG MASSIVE THANKS from all of us to SONY!

And here’s a rundown of the groups, games, and their award title:

Game: “Catan Got Your Tongue”

A Catan mod.

Game: “Stochastic Reward Engine”

This game is trying to decompose Catan into its core elements providing the players with a fun time optimising their probability choices in a binary choice environment.

All created by: Connor Watts, Peyman Hosseini, Ruizhe Yu Xia, Tom Wells

Award title: “Settle for less”

Game: “The Frankenwurst”

A fun 2D adventure game choke full of idioms.

Created by: Nicole Levermore, Owen Crucefix (iGGi-ext.), Tamsin Isaac

Award title: “When pigs… die…”

Game: “Hammer to Fall”

Grab your hammer and hit as many nails as possible. A tiny VR game about hitting nails with a hammer. Nothing nefarious going on here. Fun for the entire family!

Created by: Dominik Jeurissen, Karl Clarke, Philip Smith, Toby Best

Award title: “Hammer Time!”

Game: “Hexed or Vexed”

A spooky social deduction murder mystery.

Created by: Alex Flint, Océane Lissillour, Prakriti Nayak, Tania Dales

Award title: “Let’s burn that bridge when we come to it”

Game: “love & CLAW”

>> A beautiful fusion of balanced gameplay with a unique theme..

>> A furry good card game.

Created by: Bobby Khaleque, Daniel Cooke, Dimitris Menexopoulos, Florence Smith Nicholls, Francesca Foffano, George Long, Luiza Stepanyan, Remo Sasso, Sahar Mirhadi, Sunny Thaicharoen

Award title: “A Furry in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

Game: “⏃⏁⎎⊑⍀⋏⊬⏃”

A music toy.

Created by: Cameron Johnston, Doruk Balcı

Award title: “(Key-)stroke a chord”

Game: “Pick Up”

Find a Cube in this open world, pick up and put it back! Game Win!

Created by: Yiping Han (iGGi-ext.)

Award title: “Rinse and repeat”

Game: “Piggioms”

Created by: Alan Pedrassoli Chitayat, Lauren Winter, Steph Carter

Award title: “Seeing how the sausage is made”

Game: “snaaaaaa...(300x)...aaaake”

A 1 dimensional snake game controlled using a Pi Pico and 300 LED string.

Created by: Ben Kirman (iGGi Supervisor)

Award title: “BITE ITTTTT for snake’s sake!”

Lastly, a hearty THANKS to the four PGR GJ Organisers Doruk Balcı, Karl Clarke, Lauren Winter, and Tamsin Isaac, to the Supervisor GJ Organiser Ben Kirman, and a special mention goes to the iGGi Admin Team, in particular to Helen Tilbrook who went above and beyond to make it all happen!

The next iGGi Game Jam will take place in January 2026 - exact dates tba - and we can't wait!!