Village Gamer

Toronto-based videogame creator Ryan Henson Creighton is set to lead a diverse team of over 30 creative professionals for one of the largest game jam teams ever assembled: Project Overboard. The game will be designed in its entirety over the course of the weekend of May 11-13, and will be made available for purchase online directly after.

Every penny made from game sales and fundraising efforts goes to the Foundation for Student Success, the charitable arm of the Toronto District School Board, in order to provide school children with early access to tools and resources needed to inspire Canada’s next generation of game builders.

Project Overboard’s goal is to provide new opportunities to deserving people: to involve videogame enthusiasts of all professional backgrounds in a game jam, and to help send Toronto youth to summer technology camps. The project is now accepting pledges to accompany game sales in raising funds for the summer camp charity.

“Project Overboard is a chance to give someone else a turn,” said Ryan Henson Creighton, Creative Director of the project and founder of Untold Entertainment.  “It gives more Toronto videogame community folks the opportunity to participate in a game jam, and it helps kids discover their technological passions through our charity-driven sales.”

During last year’s TOjam, Creighton developed Sissy’s Magical Ponycorn Adventure which his 5-year-old daughter Cassie conceived, illustrated and narrated. Ponycorns was nominated for Indiecade, Moshi and Canadian Videogame Awards, and has landed on the websites of Time, Kotaku, Wired UK alongside national Canadian television coverage.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=On4qdBc3gzE]

This year, the Creighton-lead Project Overboard game, tentatively titled “Head of the Gorgon”, is built by an improptu full-service games studio, including a game design unit, a game development unit, video production unit, a production administration unit, and a marketing unit. This allows programmers, artists, voice actors and others to work in tandem with a marketing team, business specialists, website designers and a documentary crew. The experiment will result in a game that prospers from the energy of a game jam while benefiting from the collaborative strength of a large team with a focused leadership structure.

“We have a huge team of talented developers, marketers, musicians and much more assembled and ready,” said Sasha Boersma, Producer of Project Overboard. “The team is excited for the awesome new game Ryan will lead us in creating.”

Established in 2006, the Toronto Game Jam (TOjam) is a free annual event where overzealous game makers gather for a three-day game design marathon. Now in its seventh year, TOjam7 takes place at George Brown College from May 11-13 and has 400 registered participants. Following the event, completed games are showcased at a public arcade and Digifest 2012, a festival for art, technology and design. TOjam alumni include Super Time Force’s Capybara Games, Sword and Sworcery’s Super Brothers, They Bleed Pixels’ Spooky Squid Games and Dyad’s Shawn McGrath.

Follow Project Overboard on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.