Early on a Sunday morning! That’s dedication!

And so we entered the third and final day of GameHackDays!

Keen to make the most of the available hacking time, GameHackers arrived early and to help kick start their creative process we delighted them by giving them fresh made smoothies made by our fair hands! Safe to say they went pretty quickly, as did the croissants and pain au chocolate!

One more go in the zone!

With breakfast out of the way it was heads down for all the teams, a sense of frenzied activity descended on Modern Jago as teams continued to work on their games. Whist they were working Nisha and Richard from TIGA caught up with each of the teams and how their games were progressing! As we walked round each table we saw the rapid improvement in each game, clearly our GameHackers had been working hard overnight to make their idea into reality.

With everyone concentrating so hard, time seemed to be moving fast, as the countdown clock in the main hack area was shedding hours at an incredible rate! In what seemed like no time at all, lunch was upon us! Teams dashed out from their desks to grab some much needed food and drink. Then it was straight back to work, as we only had five and half hours left of hacking time! As the countdown clock ticked away the noise levels at Modern Jago increased dramatically, a controlled hush exploded into a wave of action as teams kicked things up a gear.

Nisha and Richard get the latest progress from teams on camera!

It was wonderful to watch the creations unfold and evolve, what was just a idea just a few days ago now getting close to a playable game! With occasional sugar boosts provided by Nisha, Robert and Tom the teams looked towards the finish line! Team names, categories and presentation equipment were confirmed and we were into the final hour! The final hour of any game jam is always a enjoyable but tense time! Games are tested and retested, presentations are thought about and the team decides who will head on stage to demo!

And then the countdown stuck zero! Hacking time had officially come to an end! To reward everyones hard work it was pizza and beer time! This gave everyone much needed time to relax and recuperate ahead of the demos!

Interviews taking place!

With the beer consumed and the pizzas finished, it was DEMO TIME! Three days of hard work would be demo’d on stage to fellow GameHackers and our judges! Teams had up to four minutes to talk about their game, the technology they used and show the game off! 23 teams took to the stage each offering a unique idea that integrated a whole range of technologies. We were fortunate to have Richard Lee from TIGA on hand to run the AV *and* record all the demos, his expertise made sure that all demos went well and that teams encountered few problems when taking to the stage!
Although we’ll have the full demo videos online shortly, here are some of the games demoed! Andy Touch was the brave soul to demo first, he had created an awesome looking game with a distinct visual style that enabled you paint on walls. Angry Dwarf followed, with a game about an Angry Dwarf raising merry hell on some elves! Team Atcom was next with an excellent take on the picture match puzzle that integrated facebook to create matching puzzles based on your friends pictures! Cold Cactus’s game was to help an escape pod avoid hitting asteroids and other space junk! Dude Srsly took an intersting take on the 1980′s beat em up double dragon, except this time you try and save a chicken! As it was HTML5 based it they invited other GameHackers to enter into the game on stage, very brave!

Cold Cactus’s game taking shape!

As each team stepped up to the stage, we all were amazed at the range of creativity and innovation on stage, from Kinect hacks, to large scale multiplayer gaming GameHackers really pushed the limits of what could be achieved in just 24hours. In what seemed like no time at all, the demos were over and it was time for judges to retire and make the incredibly hard choice as to who would win.

In the judges area discussion came thick and fast, we looked at each game in depth, the high quality of each teams work made the decision process pleasantly difficult! Around thirty minutes later we had come to a consensus on who would win each category, now all we had to do was tell the GameHackers!

We started with Best Flash game, winners would receive Adobe Creative Suite Six Master Suite, worth an amazing £2.5k! Lee and Renaun took to the stage and highlighted the incredible talent on offer at GameHackDays which was why they had decided award the full prize to two teams!

• 1st prize was awarded to Team Atcom for their unique social picture match game
• 2nd prize was awarded to Sam Chau for his “no interface required” sound game.

Some of the artwork used in Team Jessica’s winning game!

Next to be awarded was Best Windows 8 Game, which was awarded to Team Jessica for their beautiful point and click adventure! They all won a Kinect developer kit from Microsoft!

We also awarded a special prize to IOJOE for their Kinect hack that everyone had been enjoying throughout the event, they won an awesome Kinect development kit from Microsoft!

We then moved to the Best Mobile Game there were three winners each would receive a Nokia Lumia smartphone and Nokia premium developer accounts worth £1500 each!

• 3rd Prize: Nokia Lumia 620 and one Premium Developer Account went to Scrappy Games!
• 2nd Prize: Nokia Lumia 820 and two Premium Developer Account went to One More Go!
• 1st Prize: Nokia Lumia 920 and three Premium Developer Account went to Plant Pot Games!

Last but by no means least it was time to award the Golden Joysticks! These were available to all teams!

• The winner of the Community Spirit Award went to Doug Pennant for providing audio to an amazing 13 teams!
•  The Non challenge, challenge cup went to Dude Srsly for their awesome chicken saving multplayer beatemup!
• The Hacktackular Award went to  Sam Chau for his unique, simple and innovative take on the audio game genre!

Sadly all good things must come to an end, so as the final prizes were distributed it was time to call closing time on another GameHack event, one things for sure – we can’t wait till the next one! In the meantime we have setup an online survey to get your feedback, we would really appreciate it if you took two minutes and fill it out

We would like to thank:

• Nisha  and Richard from TIGA for their tireless work over the weekend
• Wesley and Habien from Modern Jago for their support over the weekend
• Renaun and Lee from Adobe, who battled jet lag to help GameHackers throughout the weekend and for sponsoring the event!
• Syd Lawrence from Twilio for sponsoring the amazing food
• Microsoft for providing the amazing venue and amazing Kinect devices for our attendees!
• Nokia for their amazing Lumia smartphones and Premium Developer accounts

Without our sponsors and the hard work of the team, none of this would be possible!