Do you know what a game jam is?
Think of it like a hackathon, but for game development: a creative sprint where developers design, code, and build a playable game from scratch within a set timeframe. Sounds fun, right?
At
@GopherConUK in London, we ran a 2-hour Mini Game Jam as part of my workshop "Vibe Code a 2D Game with Go and Gemini".
The theme was "Garbage Collector (green tea 🍵)", and participants had access to Antigravity, Gemini 3.6 Flash (literally one day before 3.7 launched!), and a curated set of agent skills:
• vibe-game-developer: entry point turning the agent into a game dev specialist
• ebitengineer: tips and tricks for Ebitengine, our engine of choice
• lyria: soundtrack generation (with procedural-composer for retro SFX)
• nano-banana: pixel art assets, title screens, and sprites
The result: 10 complete, playable 2D games built in a single afternoon.
Congratulations to Ivan S for winning the jam with "London Eco-Rider: Ice Cream & Bottle Patrol"! Players guide Leo on his bike past Big Ben, grabbing ice cream for turbo boosts and recycling bottles for "Eco-Fever Mode" invincibility.
Workshop repo & games:
github.com/danicat/gcuk26
Slide deck:
speakerdeck.com/danicat/vibe…
Skills catalog:
skills.danicat.dev
ALT Dani Petruzalek smiling in front of the workshop presentation screen displaying the retro pixel-art GCUK'26 Mini Game Jam title.
ALT Screenshot of winning game London Eco-Rider running in browser on Google Cloud Shell, showing bicycle controls and London skyline.
ALT Developers on stage presenting Go GC: Garbage Collector, featuring a retro 16-bit SNES-style title screen with gopher sanitation workers in safety vests.
ALT Screenshot of Guinea Pig Farm Simulator showing top-down park layout and visitor happiness meters.