May 1, 2026 Fall 2025
100 Games Later Game Jam Page (a gif of a scrolling web page populated with a 7 by seven grid of colorful squares highlight each of the 107 games students made in class).When we started this inaugural session of ‘100 Games Later’ last fall, the majority of students (including the Assistant Teacher writing this) had very little, if any experience in game design. When we wrapped, we collectively made 107 games. (You can play them on our game jam page on itch.) I like to describe the course as a cross between a drawing class and an after school athletics program at the rec center. Less about working towards one final perfect thing, and more so about the act of making something everyday and seeing what comes from it. Like finding your way to Carnegie Hall, the road to one hundred and seven games was all about practice, practice, practice.
Barista, by Will Penix (A cartoonish drawing of a purple human, smiling, against a pink background. A text box floats at the bottom center of the screen with the words “here’s your coffee” at the base of that text box, two more smaller text bubbles are shown arranged beside each other. The left bubble reads with ‘its wrong’, the right bubble reads ‘i’m going to kill you’).We had two sections full of recovering perfectionists, and folks exhausted from rigidity in their day jobs, and Blake made it clear that this space we were building together would be an exercise in letting all of that go.
Each class was focused on working quickly. Early on students would walk out of class having made anywhere from 3 - 5 games per session. It wasn’t about making something that was good or even finished; it was about just getting something made. We began by using simpler engines like Increpare’s flick game and tinychoice, and Google Slides.
Otani Showcase by Yuta Tanaka. (A screenshot of a visual novel video game that features a photograph from the corner aisle in a grocery store. We are looking at 3 stacked cases of bottles of green tea sitting in cardboard boxes. A text box at the bottom of the image reads ‘half-tani’. On the left of the image a white box has 11.5 cartoon smiley faces placed in rows of 3, indicating the number of green tea bottles in the cases). Blake built the class by bringing Brad Troemmel's concept of 'Athletic Aesthetics', a method of creation popularized by artists working on the internet in the mid-aughts; where artists prioritized creating a critical mass of recognizable work across a compressed period of time over mastery, and, communities like Glorious Trainwrecks; hobbyist, smaller game design spaces that pushed against conventional, capitalist notions of games as focus tested products built to appeal to the widest margin, and instead focused on making smaller, more specific games made for themselves or their friends.
T.B.D by Melody Sakura (A screen shot of a visual novel. Two white doves are flying on the left and right side of the screen, in a foundry. A green rectangle placed over the head of the right dove reads “run” in cursive script).While most of our homework assignments were about making games, students were also assigned games to play that expanded on material covered in class. These were games made by some of Blake's peers, or other artists popular in the scene. The material challenged our ingrained notions of game design, and also planted seeds that would inspire our own games as we got deeper in the course and began to learn more complex engines like RPG Maker, Ren'Py and Construct 3.
Students were encouraged to share their thoughts about each other's games and one assignment even tasked them with making response games to a peer's game of their choosing. Art making can often be such a solitary activity, but games, as an interactive medium, inherently need other people, so you almost have to reach outside of yourself by design. The work students made in class inspired one another to tinker with new mechanics, and brainstorm new concepts together.
BINKY XXI: BINKY GOES INTO THE HAUNTED CASTLE TO SEARCH FOR THEIR BOYFRIEND RUFF, fangame by Spiral on Glorious Trainwrecks. (A square screenshot from the game BINKY XXI. A strange white and red bear like animal floats on the side of a 2d video game dungeon to the creatures right wooden double doors are open. The creature has a speech bubble floating above its head that says “I should look inside this haunted castle where ruff said I can find him!”).Our final project was to make 3 games using any engine covered, and most importantly, to post them online. Blake was very adamant about students posting their work. It was another exercise in letting go of that preciousness, or perfectionism. Here is this thing you made, why not put it out in the world? Even if it's just for you and your friends.
100 Games Later Showcase at Boshi’s Place in Brooklyn, NY. (A warehouse like room lit by purple light. In the front of the photo a group of four people are gathered around watching a video that is being projected onto the wall in front of them. The video is a split screen feed of a zoom meeting on the right side, and a video game being played on the left).The final showcase was my favorite part of class. We saw students share things like Blue Wallick's risograph simulator, Brandon English’s Black Sitcom FPS, Yuta Tanaka’s Ultimate Joke Machine, Alex Reed’s Escape Via Rail rpg/train simulator, and Winnie Wu’s ‘Floaters Gonna Float’. These projects would later be shown IRL at Boshi’s Place. This provided an opportunity for the public to come through, and play the 100+ games that the students made, and for some of our students who lived in New York to meet each other and see people play their work in real life.
Riso Simulator by Blue Wallick. (A digital drawing of a large risograph printer inside of a room with yellow walls, and brown ceramic tile. On the right side of the image a white piece of paper as a drawing of a purple cat).
Black-Sitcom FPS.exe by Brandon English (alt text: a screenshot of a web page, in the center is a shot of a video game. In first person view, 3 CGI caricatures of the actor Martin Lawrence, a black man with a mustache and buzz cut hair are staggered across a sparse environment made of floating cubes that also feature the face of the same man).For me, as someone that's been feeling really burnt out by institutionalized, traditional ways of and spaces for making things, this class was a revelation. Taking these tools, many of them free, and just making something without expectation of this being the best, most conceptual, pristine thing I've ever made was liberatory. Learning about artists and spaces that do this kind of thing all of the time even more so. I've been spending my time since the class making my own tiny games, and it's the most excited I've been about making things in years.
I'm incredibly grateful to this time spent with Blake and the students for reminding me why I gravitated towards making things in the first place, and how crucial actually having fun is to creation.
The teachers and some of the students of 100 Games Later (8 people stand facing the camera in a room lit by purple light, two in front are crouching, the rest behind them are standing. Each person smiles, and holds up a peace sign).