This is just a short post to say that there will be another games playtesting event at CDW Studios on Sunday 24th August from 2pm to 4pm. The way it works is pretty simple. Developers bring along their games, everyone at the event can go play/test whatever games they like and provide feedback in person or anonymously. You don’t have to be showing a game to come along.
All of the details have been posted on the Facebook event page.
Screenshot from Quadrilateral Cowboy by Blendo Games.
It’s been about three weeks since the Indie Games Room(IGR) at AVCon and I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how everything went. This year I involved with AVCon in several different capacities. I was showing Expand within IGR as an exhibitor, I was a panelist for a panel called Getting Started Making Games on the Sunday and I was the Coordination Assistant for IGR. I’ll briefly touch on how things went in each of these different areas.
In case you missed IGR here is a timelapse video we did across the weekend. It starts from early on Saturday and runs until pack-up on Sunday. It gives you an idea of the number of people that moved through the room.
So this was the first time we’ve shown Expand publicly in 2 years. At this point in development we are mostly concentrating on level creation as most features are nailed down. We went into AVCon looking for confirmation that people understood the direction we were taking and would enjoy the game. The response to the game was fantastic and we’re definitely feeling confident going forward. There were only two minor bugs that reared their head. The first of which was a game breaking bug that occurred in one area of the game, we easily resolved it for the show by turning one checkpoint off. The other bug was extremely minor. Both issues have now been properly resolved which is great.
We were also fortunate to receive press from several different websites. The game was mentioned on games.on.net with James O’Connor lavishing high praise on the game.
Expand is fiendish and clever, but what really stands out about it is how curiously emotional the experience is. It’s definitely one of the most interesting games being developed in Australia right now.
We also did interviews with The Lead and Aussie Game Geek which was cool.
Photo by Anne Vu
On the Sunday of AVCon I was on a panel called Getting Started Making Games with Jake Moore. The panel went quite well with somewhere around 70 people showing up. We spoke for about half an hour and then opened the floor up to questions. Afterwards, we drummed up some conversation with several people from the audience. I challenged them to make a game within a month and then let us know how they go. We posted a series of resources on the Indie Games Room website that you can checkout if interested.
From the perspective of coordination IGR went extremely well this year. At the start of the year Brad(IGR Coordinator) and I decided that we wanted to achieve three things, host a developer party, improve the overall quality of games in the room and bring in more developers from interstate. We’re really stoked that we managed to achieve all there. On the Friday night we merged powers with ARGGGH(Adelaide’s Really Good Gathering of Game Developers) and hosted a party with a bar tab supplied by Simulation Australia. We improved the expression of interest promotions interstate which helped bring in new faces and improve the selection of games. This was the first year in which the expressions of interest were curated and the I think the room was better off for it.
So that’s the Indie Games Room for this year. We had a lot of fun and judging from the other responses, so did everyone else. It’ll be interesting to see where things go from here.
Starting from about 2 months ago Chris and I began entering Expand into several different festivals/competitions. So far the selections have only been announced for one of those festivals which is Out of Index and luckily for us, Expand was selected. Out of Index was held roughly a week ago from today in Seoul, South Korea. The festival is a new festival that works in a similar fashion to the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC. Several games are selected based on their experimental nature, each game has a short 5 minute slot in which the developer presents the game to an audience and then the audience can play the games.
The organisers of Out of Index created this super rad trailer that gives you a better picture of what things were like.
Here is the presentation that I gave for Expand. It’s only five minutes long and should give you an idea about the mechanics that are used in the game.
The selection of games is a mix of Korean and international games. I’m currently working my way through the presentations for each game. I’d encourage you to do the same as there is a lot of interesting stuff to see.
Last weekend was AVCon and The Indie Games Room. I’ll do a post up about that after I receive some of the photo’s that were taken from the event.
Expand is going to be playable at this year’s Indie Games Room at AVCon. AVCon is an anime and video games convention that is held annually at the Adelaide Convention Centre in South Australia. Both Chris and I will be there showing the game so feel to come along, play the game and have a bit of a chat with us about it.
I’ll also be giving a talk with Jake Moore about getting started making games on the Sunday afternoon. Here is the talk description.
Ever wanted to make your own video game? Not sure where to start? This is the session for you! We’ll be running through advice on getting started, what tools you need, where you can help and how you can distribute your game.
It should be a really fun weekend. I’ve been helping Brad, the IGR coordinator with the event this year. Mostly just preparing material for the website and handling the social media side of things.
I’m doing a re-run of the PuzzleScript workshop that I ran earlier in the year but this time at the Hamra Centre Library. The workshop will run from 10am to 2pm with a lunch break in between. This is apart of the library’s school holiday program and is aimed towards younger folks between the ages of 12 and 17(inclusive). I’m intending on keeping most of the workshop the same as the previous one. I’ll probably smooth out some of the sound bank material towards the end and possibly space things out a bit more.
Spots are limited so you’ll want to register for the event. The library has the software and computers all ready to go. So just bring yourself and some pen and paper to make notes.
One of the attendee’s at the last event, a friend of mine called Stuart actually went on to build two great PuzzleScript games. They are The Nodus and The Nodus: The Puzzle Caves. I highly recommend them.
Update – There are no more spots available in the workshop. The slides from the past workshop are online, so you can follow along at home. I’ll probably update that website with the newer slides leading up to the event. The slides are largely passed on the PuzzleScript documentation with a few examples added to confirm people’s understanding of the material.
If you keep track of my Twitter feed then you will know that this posting is a few days out. So much has been going on recently that it’s tricky to keep track of it all.
Last week I update the website for Expand. If you’re not familair with Expand, it’s been a long term project for myself and good friend, Chris Larkin. To quickly summarise the game:
Expand is a single player video game in which players explore a circular labyrinth constructed as an abstract black and white geometric landscape. Players must avoid getting squashed as the labyrinth twists, stretches and reveals itself, always responding to the players actions and movements.
The old wordpress website didn’t really convey what the game was about and felt a bit out of date. I think this new website quickly gets across what the game is about. Beyond setting up the page itself I also created a new Facebook page which I hope to regularly post to with updates about the game and it’s development. I also setup a short video of the game, some screens and Chris kindly uploaded one of the tracks to SoundCloud.
The game will definitely be available to download through itch.io and hopefully other distribution services too, if the cards fall nicely. I’ve currently announced a release date November 2014. It may be a little bit hopeful but it’s what we’re aiming for.
Last Thursday, when I was about to upload the website when I received an email confirming that Expand has been selected for the Out Of Index Festival in Seoul, South Korea. Out Of Index is a new games festival based on the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC. As part of Out Of Index I’ve submitted a short presentation about the game. It’ll also be playable at an after party event. This made my week. I’m really excited to be apart of something so fresh and exciting.
Expand will also be playable at this years Indie Games Room at Adelaide’s AVCon. I’ll do another post about that shortly as I’ve been involved in helping arrange the event this year.
The Cave of Ātman is out today. Based on the play tester feedback we made several tweaks through out the game. We also spend a bit of time layering the music as you progress through the puzzles.
You can play the game on the following portals. If you enjoy the game then feel free to throw us some coin through itch.io.
Hayden has also made the soundtrack available for free on Bandcamp.
I believe that Dan is writing up an article about the game. I’ll share that through along my own thoughts about the game a bit later on.
Enjoy and let us know what you think.
Recently I started working on a new project with my friend Stuart for Interstate Arcade. Interstate Arcade is a public games arcade that will touring around Australia later this year. Each of the cabinets in the arcade is custom built and games are sourced by local independent artists.
The callout for games closed about a week ago however it’s still possible to get your game into the arcade. Originally 8 or so cabinet designs were proposed, each of these designs had different input configurations from your standard arcade machine. The changes to the input layout encourage designs for different kinds of games and that’s what got me interested in making something for this project.
Stuart and I went on a short hike together to brain storm ideas. This was a really great idea as I needed to get away from the computer after crunching on Expand for the IndieCade late submission deadline. We toyed around with a few ideas but in the end came up with something that we think is pretty neat. For now, we’re both wanting to keep tight lipped but eventually we’ll reveal all the details.
What I can say is that we’ve chosen the cabinet design displayed above. There are two monitors and 12 buttons. There is enough room for someone to be in front of two buttons at once. Our game can be played with 1-12 players however I think it’s probably best played with 2 – 4. I’ve ordered some buttons online and am intending on making a custom controller to help us play test the game.
In terms of the collaboration with Stuart. I’m responsible for the programming and he’s doing the graphics and music. We’ll both have a hand in the design. Stuart’s pixel art is really fantastic, I’d encourage you to head over to his website and check it out. Stuart also came along to the puzzle script workshop that I ran at the Adelaide City Council library a few months ago. Since then he’s made two really great puzzle script games, The Nodus and The Nodus:Puzzle Caves, you should give them a shot.
For now we both are wanting to keep tight lipped about the idea. However I can share a little intro screen that we’ve been working on. Enjoy.
Late last year my twin brother, Daniel proposed a game idea to me. The idea was based on a mechanic from strategy role playing game Jean D’arc for the PSP. In that game, when you attack an enemy they drop an aura behind them. If you collect this aura then your unit becomes stronger which is advantageous. However if an enemy unit collects the aura then they become stronger. This mechanic creates a stronger emphasis on the direction in which you attack a unit and how your units stand their ground.
Dan wanted to build a small puzzle game that used this idea. He showed me several unit types of level variations that he had scribbled out on paper. It was clear that the idea had merit and that he’d put a bit of thought into it. So I decided to help him build out the game. I was quite excited to work with him as he hasn’t created any games since our first commercial game Pollution Solution which we created while in high school.
We are nearing the end of development on the game which is called The Cave of Atman and are looking for people to help us play test the game. The game has already gone through a few passes of testing and at this stage we are looking to iron out any bugs. If you’re interested in helping us out then please get in touch.
One thing that I really enjoy doing is playing through the batch of games that are developed as part of game jams such as Ludum Dare. I usually sit down with my girlfriend and we take turns in trying out the different games. We also run through games listed on curated websites such as Free Indie Games and the recently released games on portals such as Game Jolt. When trolling through the list of games, those listed as local multiplayer games tend to stick because we both want to play.
Unfortunately there aren’t any websites that just curate free, local multiplayer games which is why I created a small tumblr blog to do just this. It’s called Free Local Multiplayer and was released a few weeks ago. I’m trying to regularly update the site with new games every week or so. The idea is to build a list of solid, enjoyable games that people can play together with a friend or at larger multiplayer parties. The spirit of playing games in a communal space with friends, strangers, family, partners or whoever is something that I think is definitely worth spreading.
I wanted to create something that was vibrate and fun. The website needed to quickly get across the types of experiences people could have which is why I opted for the grid design with large cells. I ended up choosing to use tumblr and modified an existing theme. The selection of themes on tumblr is impressive with most themes looking fantastic. I was originally hoping to use animated gifs for each screenshot however I ran into issues related to CORS so I opted for static screens instead.
All of the games posted are tweeted out at @FLMGames. If you’re interested in helping me curate the website then feel free to get in touch.
