Atari/Jeff Minter game jam results, Llamasoft, and ST Format

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 09 May 2025 17:03:00 +0000

So, my game HERD NERD is a winner in the “I, REBEL” game jam, hosted by Atari and Jeff Minter.

We are delighted to let you know after hours of play and deliberation - Jeff Minter himself chose your game as THIRD PLACE WINNER

Your game stood out in all the right ways: creative, clever, weird and totally nailing the theme. The team (and the judges!) were blown away by your take on the theme and your execution.

✨ What an honour! ✨

All three winners receive the same prize, but honestly I am more excited to hear why Jeff, Giles, and Jason liked my game. So many nice words to spur me on!

The Results

You can hear more about the game jam and the winning games on the latest Atari podcast episode on YouTube or your favourite podcast listening point. You’ll also learn a bit about the famous Superlambanana sculpture and the infamous Sven Bømwøllen video game. You have been warned!

HERD NERD

You can download and play HERD NERD for free/PWYC on Mac and PC. So check it out! Have fun.

Back in the day

It’s July 1991 and I’ve just walked back from Lewis Meeson’s newsagent to my family home clutching the latest monthly ST FORMAT, issue 24. I’d browsed the magazine in-store to make sure it was worth £2.95 of my hard-earned pocket money, and was eager to try out the software included on the 3.5” floppy disk. This was pre-internet and that was the easiest way of getting hold of a selection of new software. The same thing applied to Amiga, Macintosh, PC, and more.

Today I dug out my actual magazine from storage and my nostalgia dial went all the way up to 11.

Llamatron was my first encounter with Jeff Minter and his weird and wonderful type of game. I played it a lot, mostly in 2-player with the droid or other members of my family. Enemies like sentient cans of cola or screaming Mandelbrot patterns are scorched into my memory forever more.

But it wasn’t just Llamatron that was so great in this issue, I also remember using the Revenge document displayer (with no internet we used to read a lot of text files that were included on the disks, like the Llamatron manual and readme about it being distributed in a new-fangled way known as Shareware). And also Little Green Selector which replaced the standard file selector with one that had fully-featured file manager functionality, though eventually I migrated to the even more amazing Universal Item Selector III which was one of many such replacements. It really was a different era.

Elsewhere in the magazine is a list of Jeff’s favourite games of all time (as of mid-1991). I love that he put his own game at number 1. And then to also include 2 more of his games. What a rock star! Click the image to zoom. Below you’ll find a full list of games with links to read more.

Get Info: #gamejam

Atari/Jeff Minter game jam results, Llamasoft, and ST Format

The Results

HERD NERD

Back in the day

A yak’s favourite games (of all time), 1991