DreamFeel

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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Reposted from IGDA Scotland.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is the premier event in the video game calendar. In this post, Paul Andrew McGee writes about his experience of this year's event as one of the IGDA Scholars.

When I learned of my scholarship I was absolutely thrilled, having been a fervent follower of E3 for over a decade. However none of this could have prepared me in the least for the week I had and everything I took from the experience.  Indeed, it’s certainly hard not to have preconceived notions about this week of publicity, business deals and announcements; from a distance it can appear big, loud and crude. This is far from the whole story. Yes, I was certainly impressed by the bravado and showmanship; choppy video streams do not do the press conferences justice (although I remain less enthused by the ever pervasive dubstep!).

However what really made an impression on me as I came to meet and know so many attendees was a simple, undoubtedly obvious, realisation. E3, and by extension the videogame industry itself, is just people: lots and lots of dedicated, hardworking and interesting people. It was great to get a ticket to E3, but it was fantastic to get a chance to meet and be inspired by so many of those who make up the industry.

Venice Beach near sunset. Lots lots more after the jump!

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Rosie Henderson the fantastic artist on our first semester MProf game recently finished a trailer for it! Watch on youtube here.

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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A short post on the recent molydeux game jam last month which was fantastic.

I've been running game jams in Dundee since December and the biggest to date was the recently finished #molyjam based on the crazy tweets of Peter Molydeux from the 30th of March to the 1st of April. We are totally indebted to the enormous amount of organization that went into this around the world to pull it off at such short notice, and I feel grateful to play a small part in this rolling ball of awesome. Check out the website here with all the games.

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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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I've decided to break a humongous catchup blog post into a few manageable chunks! First bringing us from January to the middle of Feb. :D

In January we finished The Lost, our WP7 haunted house game. I was happy with how it turned out, having made some small but nice changes to the gameplay during the holidays and bringing it back to a more arcade-y experience, closer to the original vision. Level design by Isabella Wang, audio by Cam Goold and the wonderful art was done by Rosie Henderson who is currently a cutting a trailer! Find more info and some pictures here.
Image by Pete Angstadt For more on this picture (that's our game!) and TigJam 6 in Cambridge read on!

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