Students to create video games in 48 hours at Chillennium 2022
Hundreds of students from multiple universities will soon pack up their computers, sleeping bags and preferred forms of caffeine in preparation for Chillennium, a 48-hour marathon event where students create video games from scratch.
Hosted annually by the Texas A&M School of Architecture’s Department of Visualization, Chillennium is the largest student-run game jam in the world. This year’s event is April 1-3, 2022 at the Hildebrand Equine Complex.
Fueled by contest-provided meals and snacks, and with access to a staffed, onsite resting area, students will race to meet the Sunday, April 3 deadline to deliver fully developed, desktop-based games that they started after learning the competition theme at Chillennium’s outset. All elements of the games must be created on-site.
Working alone or in teams of up to four participants, the game jammers employ their own hardware and software and use programming languages available online, loaded on their computers, or provided by contest organizers.
Contestants will be aided by industry professionals who act as on-site mentors, including experts from Epic Games, Gearbox Software, EA, Insomniac Games, Robot Entertainment, Houdini and more.
At the contest’s conclusion, judges will play and rank the games based on their innovation, quality and completeness in programming, art, design and sound. Contest organizers will award prizes that include highly-sought licenses for high-powered, professional-grade gaming software.
