DreamFeel

On the Thursday night before the IGF deadline, and after a few drinks, I decided 'fuck everything' and that I would attempt to get at least a trailer finished for the competition after all. I had previously given up and felt pretty awful about the prior month (most of the actual work just involved a couple small games which are neat and some writing). With new motivation, I pulled it all together a little and submitted. Right now this is 'It Clicks'; the name seems to change faster than I can type it.

I'm unsure about the video quality, Youtube - even in HD - isn't quite friendly to it, but it was nice to stake a marker of the game's development into the ground. Indie Statik noticed it and Cactus! It also continued my IGF submitting streak for the third year, so with that in mind I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the other games I've entered in the past and whether that might illuminate over two years of making games.

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At long last, nearly 9 months later, the game has been released for free online. Find the download under demo through here or visit my page for the game here (with a slightly more up to date build). You can also buy the rights to the game if so inclined. Here's the trailer I made just prior to launch:



To see some ace coverage and a Let's Play follow after the jump.

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Space Whale: Whale from Outer Space! - July Teaser from Mac on Vimeo.

A psychedelic explosion of colour, fish and meta-galactic mammals.

Swing through space using the gravity of planets, growing bigger as you eat, until you can devour entire galaxies. Orbiting different planets causes different instruments to blend into the music and chomping planetoids plays musical notes into the cosmic cacophony.

Space Whale was created as part of our Professional Masters in Games Development at Abertay University. It was designed and developed using UDK throughout our second semester alongside other modules, between February and May 2012.

Credits:
Art: Chris Dodds, Luna Li, Sophia Pretoria George
Code: John Cooper, Tin Katavic, Shwetha Rao, Ramkumar Thiagarajan, Paul Andrew McGee
Design: Paul Andrew McGee
Production: Robin Berry

From July 2011 to June 2012

12 Months of Game Development - Paul Andrew McGee from Paul McG

Games (by first appearance):

0:00 - Fuaim
0:05 - Beep Brrp Bing Bang Bosh
0:09 - Space Whale: Whale from Outer Space
0:13 - AAHYOURFACEISONFIRE!!
0:22 - Beat Box Story
0:27 - The Lost
0:33 - One More Cup of Coffee
0:36 - Beggar, Baby, Bride
0:39 - A Sea of Roots
0:45 - Gameboy cycling - flash demo

I think it would be nice to make this a bi-monthly feature on the state of my current games, yay! You can find the first one here. I should have a video of my exploits over the last 12 months up soon as well.

First of all  Space Whale: Whale From Outer Space!
Space Whale is a gravity based, Katamari Damacy inspired game of eating and growing and eating and blowing up which creates music as you play (loops triggered by planets and notes played by eating). A psychedelic explosion of colour and fish (and giant space mammals).

The student prototype was finished in May and it came together nicely in the final month. When you focus on what is cool about a game and simplify, simplify, simplify the design, you can easily fix the core and improve what is broken. Expect a trailer in the next couple days.

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To finish the catchup here's the status of everything I'm working on right now. Seven! :O

One More Cup of Coffee - I finished a version of this unusual music game back in December. It was almost certainly an unsuccsessful experiment, players were totally lost. The core game concepts were so unusual and they weren't communicated very well, but I've had ideas of where to take it next. I started working on it again a couple weeks ago but it felt wrong scrapping all the content and particularly the ending I had written.

Shortly afterward the new ideas morphed into a new game, what is currently called Isis. Only a few days ago I got the IGF feedback on this experiment, and it was really constructive and interesting, inspiring me even with Isis to get a chance to go back and polish this sometime soon for public consumption. There's bits I still really like.

Isis - This is my newest project, no pictures yet! Hopefully will take the audio experiments of One More slightly further but also more understandable. Really excited to work on it and at the moment it could go lots of different ways but alas I don't have much time to experiment and finish before deadlines!

To get this pic explained and read about the other 5 (!) games click on. :)

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6 Hour Pirate Kart Game: AAHYOURFACEISONFIRE!!

The next catchup post begins at the end of February with the GDC Pirate Kart Weekend. Developers all over the world tried to make as many games as possible to show at GDC. I feel pretty strong about the Pirate Kart ethos that anyone can and should make games, rather than the tiny subset of the world who do at the moment. Ian Bogost's Gameomatic is interesting and I eagerly anticipate Anna Anthropy's book 'Rise of the Videogame Zinesters'  (just released in the UK woo). There was also a Kickstarter to help the latest Pirate Kart get floorspace at GDC and I was lucky to have a game based upon an idea of mine created by Alan Chatham. A game about whaling, hardship and existence. FUNTIMES! http://openchord.org/Whaling/

More about AAAH & my semester two project Space Whale after the jump!

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