Time-travel game picks up top prize at Kelvin Games Jam

A time-travelling, reality-warping adventure has scooped the top prize at the University of Glasgow’s Kelvin Games Jam competition.

’So, You Accidentally Crushed Lord Kelvin with a Time Machine’, created by four students under the name The Time Machines, was judged the best entry in the competition at an event held at the Mazumdaw-Shaw Advanced Research Centre on Thursday 14 November.

Maxine Armstrong, Xiggy Holding, Daniela Shchegelskaya and Dai Zhang developed the game, which they describe as a ’darkly comedic tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) about timelines, paradoxes, and ’Weekend at Bernie’s’ing a Victorian physicist’.

The team beat designs from six other teams to win the £500 prize, which was judged by a multidisciplinary panel of experts from academia and journalism.

The Kelvin Games Jam challenged teams from across the University’s four colleges to code or design fun-to-play educational games which reflected concepts of risk-taking, innovation, and scientific exploration, each of which were reflected in Kelvin’s own life and research.

’So, You Accidentally Crushed Lord Kelvin with a Time Machine’ casts players in the unfortunate role of the titular time-travellers. They cause a fatal accident in 1849 which leaves Lord Kelvin dead before he is able to make many of his pioneering scientific discoveries. They must find a way to prevent the resulting time paradoxes they have created from erasing their future.

The game uses two decks of playing cards where players draw on attempts at actions - number cards mean success, face cards trigger complications, and jokers cause catastrophic timeline problems. Players create characters by answering basic questions about their identity and time travel experience, with no traditional stats since the chaos of time travel makes everyone equally likely to fail.

Lauren Bergin, news editor of PCGamesN, was one of the judges. She said: "There’s nothing really to fault with The Time Machines’ work here. The concept is fun, it’s easily playable, and ensures that it accounts for diversity and potentially triggering content. It lays out a solid set of rules for both players and GMs, and offers various ways of exploring Lord Kelvin’s history."

Dr Tim Peacock, director of the University of Glasgow’s Games and Gaming Lab, also took part in the judging panel. He said: "This is a very creative TTRPG, beautifully illustrated, and well informed in its gameplay and of satirising the history while encouraging people to learn from it and to ’playfully’ recognise the value in potential failures."

The Kelvin Games Jam is part of the University’s ongoing celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the birth of William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs, better known around the world as Lord Kelvin.

Born on June 26th 1824, Kelvin was one of the 19th century’s most accomplished scientists. His achievements include key contributions to the design and laying of the world’s first transatlantic telegraph cable, which enabled communications between Europe and the United States, and the development of the laws of thermodynamics.

Today he is perhaps best-remembered for establishing the absolute scale of temperature which we now know as the Kelvin scale.

The Kelvin Games Jam judging panel were:
  • Dr Matthew Barr, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow
  • Lauren Bergin, News Editor of PCGamesN
  • Professor Joerg Goette, School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Glasgow
  • Dr Visit Hirankitti, Director Software Engineering Program, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology, Ladkrabang
  • Dr Timothy Peacock, Lecturer in History and War Studies and Director, Games and Gaming Lab, University of Glasgow