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+title: Spring Lisp Game Jam 2023 Summary
+date: 2023-06-05 09:00:00
+tags: guile, gamedev, gamejam, chickadee
+summary: Check out all of the entries to the Spring Lisp Game Jam!
+---
+
+The [Spring Lisp Game Jam
+2023](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023) submission
+deadline has now passed and we are now in the rating period.  I was a
+co-host of the jam alongside
+[technomancy](https://technomancy.itch.io/) but he did all the real
+work setting everything up.  There were [30
+submissions](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023/entries)
+this time around, which I believe is a new record for our little jam!
+This particular jam was a special one for me.  I not only submitted a
+game built with [Chickadee](/projects/chickadee.html) but I also got
+*paid* to work on another entry as part of my work at the [Spritely
+Institute](https://spritely.institute)!
+
+If there’s a downside to doing a game jam as part of your day job,
+it’s that there isn’t much time to hack on a game just for funsies.
+Woe is me, right?  I *really* wanted to submit something built with
+Chickadee, though, not only to get some experience making things with
+it but also to validate that the whole stack is actually improving
+over time.  So, I did my best to scope my ambitions *way down* and
+create the simplest game I could think of that I could still be happy
+to share.  That game is [Super
+Bloom](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023/rate/2102759)!
+You play as a little bouncing circle, I guess, that is tasked with
+helping a young sunflower seedling grow and bloom.  You need to water
+it and destroy the dirt balls (which my limited art abilities made
+look more like meatballs) that want to kill it for some reason unknown
+even to me.  It’s a very minimal game.  Water is used both to grow the
+flower and to attack the dirt balls.  The only keys used are the arrow
+keys and Z.  Most of the work happened on the weekends at the start
+and end of the jam.  I’m quite happy with how it came out given how
+little time I spent making it!
+
+![Super Bloom gameplay GIF](/images/chickadee/super-bloom.gif)
+
+In addition to using Chickadee, this game served as another
+opportunity to test drive my still-unreleased game engine named
+[Catbird](/catbird-an-experimental-game-engine-for-scheme-programmers.html).
+There are still several rough edges but things are definitely headed
+in the right direction.  The new in-engine REPL, as crude as it is,
+proved very useful for evaluating small expressions quickly without
+having to switch back to Emacs.  Much of the game was developed live
+at the REPL from within Emacs, while the game was running, except for
+when I encountered engine bugs or needed to do a big refactor or
+something.  Catbird auto-reloads non-code assets (images, sound, etc.)
+so it was quick and easy to check out how sprite updates looked inside
+the game.  The biggest change in my tools this time around was using
+[Libresprite](https://libresprite.github.io) instead of GIMP for the
+pixel art.  I had a great experience with Libresprite and intend to
+stick with it for future game dev projects.
+
+For Spritely, Christine and I worked on a distributed, networked
+virtual world prototype called
+[Fantasary](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023/rate/2103526).
+I spent *a lot* of time on this and even though it doesn’t have much
+in the way of gameplay it is a very important prototype for us and if
+you want to know more about it then keep an eye on the Spritely blog
+because we will be writing about all the details there!  But wait,
+there’s more!  Spritely contributed not only one, but *two* entries to
+the jam.  Check out
+[Wireworld](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023/rate/2103611)
+for the [WASM-4](https://wasm4.org/) fantasy console, made using the
+[Guile Hoot](https://gitlab.com/spritely/guile-hoot) WebAssembly
+toolchain that Spritely is developing.  There will be more details
+about this one one the Spritely blog, as well.
+
+As far as I can tell, there are no other entries that used Guile, and
+[only one other
+entry](https://itch.io/jam/spring-lisp-game-jam-2023/rate/2102505)
+that used Scheme at all.  As usual, Common Lisp and Fennel (the Lisp
+that compiles to Lua) were used for the bulk of the entries.  This is
+call to all Schemers to get out there and make some games!  And if you
+don’t want to use Guile, I *know* at least Gambit and Chicken are good
+for making games.
+
+Congrats to all jammers that participated, whether you completed your
+entry or not.  I’ve been following the Lisp Game Jam for years and it
+keeps getting better and better and seeing more and more people catch
+the Lisp bug (or curse, depending on your perspective) is exciting!