A fun fact about Train Jam is that you never know when you are going to get a decent network signal. This year, it turns out, there wasn’t one for the entirety of the trip—at least for me. So rather than the daily blog I had hoped I would publish, I am writing my full experience recap. Thanks for reading!

Train Jam is off to a great start! Before leaving the station in sunny, warm Chicago, we all gathered at the Bottom Lounge to pick up our Train Jam info packets and meet with one another, including Train Jam organizers, Adriel and John.

The best way to connect with other gamers is to share our creations from previous game jams. We had a blast playing each other’s games! Text Quest, in particular, caught my eye. It’s a brilliant idea to use text as the artwork.

Typically it’s “wheels-up” for our team to make the annual trek down to San Francisco for GDC, but this year, we are riding the rails. Or at least, I am riding the rails.

I will be joining 300 other developers from across the globe for Train Jam, a 52 hour game jam. We will depart from Chicago’s Union Station on February 23 and arrive, hopefully with a handful of completed games, in San Francisco on the 25. Just in time for a little bit of sight-seeing before GDC kicks off.