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Today was the first day of the conference, I arrived at 8 o’ clock with my team members and we got ready to set our game up and prepare for the days ahead. The first day is just a warmup however as there will only be students, teachers, staff, speakers (for the speeches on the following days) and the jury so the day was relatively calm and I had plenty of time to test some of the games on the show floor.
Before I could move away and start testing games we had to set up though, me and Robin (actually mostly Robin) worked on fixing the last few glitches and problems and added a few final functions. After that Robin was bushed and went home, leaving the rest of the work to those of us who didn’t just recover from a 39 degrees fever.
Honestly there wasnät much that happened near out game, we got some really good feedback but nothing to reallly write about in this blog. I guess I’ll write about the games I played today and some short thourghts on them.
Anyway, the first year projects I played was:
Totemic (Lingonskogen)
A fun and hectic multiplayer arena game where your goal is to take control over the totem and gain the most points. Really, the only critisism I could find was that the concept is hard to get used to and getting the controls mixed up is easy.
Accelerate (Boreal)
I’m close friends with one of the developers of this game. It’s a very simple game about racing through a maze at high speeds, surprisingly deep even if the input is not really Theme Park-esque (it’s basically just a joystick) even so it’s one of the best 1st year games on the conference in my opinion.
Long Play (Poang)
I… want to say really nice things about this game sinc ethe people working on at are some really good friends but it does feel very lacking in many ways. For starters, their input doesn’t seem to work properly and while the gameplay is fully functional it’s not the most exciting thing in the world. Still, I Love the aesthetics and the graphics quality as well as the idea for the input (I just wish that it worked the way it should…).
Space Maze (Golden Goats)
Back when we were instructed on what to do fpr our trailer, Marcus showed us a viedo of what a trailer shouldn’t be like (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aGDCE6Nrz0). The trailer for Space Maze honestly reminded me of that video, fortunatly the game didn’t follow suit and is actully quite fun, the rotating maze can be used to pretty efficently screw people over and it does occasionaly get rather hectic. Far from the best game on the floor but still pretty fun.
Potbellied King (Slightly Coded (That’s me and my team))
The game I’ve been working on with my team for this whole course and I spent some time around noting the feedbacks. I… do not feel comfortable leaving critisism on my own game as my opninion will be colored by the fact that I have helped develop it and probably played it more than anyone else. Still, I did play it today, and I want to mention it because of that.
Silly Saucer (Laughing Lama)
The team behind this project have been planning since the second course of this educationa and they’ve been working their literal asses off. (They even had a permament office for the purpose of developing this game) I was honestly impressed at the presentation of their concept in which they showed an incredible capability of planning ahead and providing powerful data. I personally can’t even imagine myself working or planning as hard as they did during this course. The game they made is good, but to me it feels like it doesn’t have the same level of excitement as the other multiplayer games like Accelerate or Totemic. I’m not sure – maybe I need to play some more of it.
…and here’s the 2nd year projects I tried:
Temple of Light (Parhelion)
A first-person puzzle game with mirrors. I like the idea and the concept but the level I played was less about solving a puzzle and more about running around finding mirrors to activate, maybe I need to play another level before I give it my final judgement. Still, I liked the music, sound effects and graphics and like I said: it’s an interesting concept.
Tower Offensive (Deconstructed Development)
Tower Offensive is the tower defence and bejeweled mash-up I mentioned in the last post. I only got to play it for a single level today since it glitched mid-game and they had to fix it – I might come back to it tomorrow.
Mechropolis (Digital Tuna)
Just like on the beta I managed to completely break some of the obstacle sin this game. This time I did manage to get to the second level, aprtially because they set the respawning to something more immediatly close rather tahn the very beginning of the level.
Defunct (Freshly Squeezed)
Defunct might be my favorite game on the floor. It’s got an interesting concept that changes a traditional genre for the better, they’ve got great visuals and audio feedback. Last time I played they didn’t seems to have multiplayer but if they do by tomorrow (or the day after that) then I know for certain who gets my vote for the GGC award.
Finally, the 3rd year projects. Only 4 so I managed to test pretty much all of them to some extent:
Crest (Eat Create Sleep)
Okay, so I didn’t really try this game out as much as I did with the other 3rd year games but it does seem to be smoe sotr of God game, I’ve never been very into the genre and it doesn’t seems like it’s my thing, but it does seem like it tries to take a few interesting spins at the genre.
Para-site (The Host)
A game that utilises Occulus Rift for a horror game to give the player the maximum amount of immersion. “I got so scared I couldn’t move” is what I’d like to say but after a few minutes of play I was feeling far to queasy from the OR to actually know if I was scared or not and I had to turn the game off. It didn’t help that the OR’s resolution is a little of, meaning that I have to strain my eyes to understand what’s going on. I see the appeal of making a horror game in OR and I’d definitly like to play it – but without the OR, please? (Also, possibly in a dark empty room where I’m all alone and nobody would be able to hear my terrified screams)I don’t think the OR is gonna give me more immersion as long as I feel like I’m gonna puke…
Writing in silver ink (Think Twice)
A game about social anxiety. Apart from the interesting graphical style and the possible subject matter I donät see what’s in this project. Still, it’s very short so it’s not a bad idea to give it another go if nothing else is free.
Well, that’s about it for today, I’ll blog ab out tomorrow as well unless I’m so dead tired I can’t move.
Wish me luck. Martin~
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