It’s March, and VPL’s first GameJam is well underway. Tommy already made a post explaining what it’s all about. Still, I thought I’d do a bit of advertising for it here and encourage people who maybe aren’t ready to make a game from scratch to get in on some game creation. Fair warning: these won’t be accepted as GameJam entries, so this post is entirely for fun from that perspective. This is likely a moot point, though, as I’m guessing my audience is likely too old to be entering the game jam anyway, but shout-outs to any grade 2-8 students reading my posts. I’ll be focusing on a suite of games that allow players to make games within them in addition to playing user-created levels.

I’ll start with something that’s been popping up in my newsfeed lately: the original Super Mario Maker for the WiiU. If you want to borrow this one and play other people’s levels, jump on it quickly. WiiU servers are getting shut down in April, taking all of the user-created levels with them. You’ll still be able to build and play through your own levels, but that’s about it. Borrow it soon, though, and you can help Team 0% ensure that every level ever uploaded gets beaten by someone other than the original creator before that inevitable shutdown. At the time of writing this (March 18^th, 2024), there’s only a single level left: Trimming the Herbs. This clear video is from the creator, who had to beat it to upload it to the servers, so don’t go thinking someone’s pulled it off just yet. Though… if even seasoned Mario veterans are having trouble with this one, then maybe getting that final clear is a little out of reach for most people.