Why we invested in Simple technologies to power GameJam

For those who have looked at what powers GameJam, by now may have noticed that we entirely focused on 2D gaming — with a tool like ct.js powering our stack, which is built on top of PIXI.JS.

Our GameJam platform at Koozooker works to natively support ct.js game exports. Although at the moment the platform is not available for other GameJam developers, this part of the platform may become available soon.

We centered our technology stack on:

• A Simple 2D Gaming Engine.
• WebGL and PIXI.JS.

The decisions for this have been deliberate. Let me explain. Of course — although, I am personally a big enthusiast of very simple 2D games.

1. The turnaround time it takes for base game developers as well as contributors to the games is very low. It takes very little time to prototype ideas around very simple 2D games.
2. The game engine, ct.js is very simple for even beginners. Which makes prototyping base game concepts very easy and straight forward. It is one of the simplest game engines I have stumbled upon — but still, quite powerful in terms of capabilities. Especially when you look at how powerful PIXI.JS is as a technology. Although it is a very young engine that is mostly supported by just a single developer, I see a lot of potential when I am looking at the future of this game engine. It is also open source.

Screenshot of ct.js — derived from the ct.js website

We wanted to make sure the velocity to develop very simple concepts and extend these concepts is very high. Which is why we chose to support these tech platforms for our GameJam platform. And the set of choices we have made for the technology stacks we are supporting allow the best blend of this.

Of course, our editor has its own powerful features, such as the capability to support the development of games by extending functionality within your game submission to include code in your own cloud hosting environment. And of course, the ability to use WebSockets, and HTTP requests. We believe the combination of these sets of technologies will allow everyone to design and prototype concepts, quickly.