Seth Coster, a game designer at Butterscotch Shenanigans, a local game studio, spoke with attendees at the 2025 Global Game Jam at UMSL. (Photo courtesy of Pavani Laxmi Priya Maheswarapu)
On a Friday evening in late January, dozens of video-game creators gathered on the bottom floor of Anheuser-Busch Hall on the campus of the University of Missouri–St. Louis to test their skills in the annual Global Game Jam, a truly global event with more than 35,000 “jammers” participating across 97 countries.
At UMSL, 82 creators worked in groups to build 24 different games, one of the strongest showings in the United States – the 9th-highest attendance and 7th-most games created in the country. The doors opened at A-B Hall at 5 p.m. on Jan. 24, designers started working on their games at 6:30 p.m. and submissions were due at 4 p.m. on Jan. 26.
“Even though it’s an overnight event and even though it started in the evening, the enthusiasm that the participants carried was amazing,” said Pavani Laxmi Priya Maheswarapu, the president of the Information Technology and Cybersecurity Club, which helped organize the event. “Their energy was contagious, for sure. Seeing them all work together, coming up with ideas and creating different games, was inspiring.”
This was the ninth time UMSL has hosted the event on campus, but the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. Dinesh Mirchandani, chair of the Department of Information Systems and Technology, credited College of Business Administration Dean Shu Schiller as a driving force for bringing the Global Game Jam back to campus.
“We see the event as an opportunity for UMSL’s students, across all colleges, to practice the skills they develop in our classes including art, entrepreneurship, music, information systems, management and creative writing to develop a product they can list on their resume and talk proudly about in an interview,” Mirchandani said. “We also saw the potential that some of these games could become commercial successes, create local employment and help the economy of St. Louis.”
Mirchandani noted that, in a full-circle moment, Butterscotch Shenanigans, a local game studio that participated in the first UMSL event in 2012, was back this year as a sponsor of the 2025 event.
Sarika Gauba, a graduate student pursuing her master’s in cybersecurity at UMSL, saw the Global Game Jam as an opportunity for a family outing with her two sons. Aayush is attending Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville, and Aarav is a sophomore at Parkway North.
Cybersecurity graduate student Sarika Gauba brought her sons, Aayush and Aarav, to participate in the Global Game Jam. (Photo courtesy of Dinesh Mirchandani)
“It was fun,” she said. “The best part was my kids also got a chance to make a game with me, and we made a team. That was the best part.”
Making the whole challenge even more, well, challenging, was that participants were not given the theme for the event until 6 p.m. on Friday. The groups first had to come up with a concept for the game, and were then able to begin the development process. When the theme for the 2025 Global Game Jam was announced as “bubbles,” Aarav quickly suggested something similar to one of his favorite games, Flappy Bird.
That’s how Whale Bubble Catch started.
“We tried to make a simple and playable game with a clear win and loss resolution,” Gauba said. “It was an underwater adventure where a friendly whale navigates a dynamic underwater world filled with colorful bubbles and dangerous jellyfish and imposing mountains. You have to avoid the jellyfish, and you have to save the life of the whale. Catching the bubbles boosts your score and increases the chances of surviving.”
They even designed a responsive element into the game. When the player is doing well, the difficulty increases. If the player is not doing well, the game becomes easier. Sarika Gauba admits her team was a bit skeptical they would be able to finish in the allotted time – it was the first attempt at something like this for all three of them – but they did get it done.
For the demonstration of the game, Aarav played and Aayush took care of presenting the game to the group. Gauba said she was very proud of not only what they accomplished but how they handled the presentation, and added that her sons are motivated to improve on the game.
Aayush Gaupa gives the demonstration of Whale Bubble Catch, the game he helped design with his mother, Sarika, and younger brother, Aarav, as Aarav plays the game. (Photo by Dinesh Mirchandani)
“We will improve on it, definitely,” she said with a laugh. “We wanted to add a multiplayer type of thing. We did our best in the time we had. Me and my kids want to make something more with it, to add to the game.”
Others at the event noticed their work.
“Sarika did a great job,” Maheswarapu said. “She is married. She has kids, and the enthusiasm and interest that she carries is very inspiring. She brought her family to the event. She worked along with them, and they developed this beautiful game. That was inspiring.”
