Matt Hammill, funky, fearless creator of IGF Student Showcase nominated Gesundheit!, has been a busy, busy man. After IGF (which was fun, man—sucks I got sick!), he finished school, joined an animation studio, and even released a children’s book. Which is all thoroughly rad (congrats, Matt!), for sure, but, let’s be honest, what we here at TIGS want is more of that super cute, hand-drawn, homemade gaming goodness. Thankfully, he’s been “pluggin’ away” at that too!
Just recently he did a little making-of feature on Gesundheit! for Game Developer Magazine’s fall Game Career Guide, which you can find right here. It’s got design sketches, fun mock-up artwork, and useful reflections on the game development process, specifically working with AGS. Groovy.
Update: He’s also got a collection of misc. game art he’s done up on his personal site. Bonus grooviness.
And the clarion call goes out for next year’s Independent Games Festival! The IGF is one of the best parts of GDC, and it gets bigger and better every year. Definitely try to submit something, if possible, and, barring that, make an effort to attend the conference. You will never see things the same again. (And that’s just if you go drinking with Phil Fish, pictured at right.)
The two big changes to IGF this year are the new judges (including 2d Boy’s Kyle Gabler and Kloonigames’ Petri Purho), and the addition of an Innovation Award to the Main Competition.
Here are the important dates:
July 1st, 2008 – Submissions are Open November 1st, 2008 – Submission Deadline, Main Competition November 15th, 2008 – Submission Deadline, Student Competition January 5th, 2009 – Finalists Announced, Main Competition January 19th, 2009 – Finalists Announced, Student Competition March 23rd-27th, 2009 – Game Developer’s Conference 2009 March 25th-27th, 2009 – IGF Pavilion @ GDC March 25th, 2009 – IGF 2009 Awards Ceremony
As usual, IGF submission is $95. See the website for more details!
...comes a whole new experience that is guaranteed to change the face of electronic entertainment forever. During a private unveiling of the game in San Francisco this past weekend, reknowned movie critic Roger Ebert purportedly took his hands off the keyboard after just 10 seconds of play and said+, quietly and to no one in particular:
I’ve heard many arguments for why games are art. This is best one. I am convinced. My hat is off to you, Romeopie.
He then proceeded to cry real tears of joy which, he claimed, “had not touched my cheeks in over 75 years. Since the Great War.” It is not understood exactly which war to which Mr. Ebert was referring, or how he could have cried before he was born, in 1942. However, those in attendance were compelled to believe that he was being genuine with his emotions.
Oh yes, it’s finally here! Noitu Love 2 is the very long awaited sequel to the original side-scrolling mighty-morphing action game from Konjak. Hit up the site for both an extended demo version and to purchase the full version online. The forums do seem to list some problems with getting order emails through, which seems mainly to do with PayPal (although it worked for me), so if you can avoid using that then maybe a better plan as there are a number of payment options, but if not I’m sure it’ll probably work out fine anyway.
$20 may seem a little high (edit: according to the comments, this is apparently only the case if you’re a student… bugger…), but I swear on my reputation as the most ‘occasional’ contributor to TIGSource that if you at least give the demo a try you will not be disappointed. And if you have already, then you’re probably too busy clicking the above link to read this. I understand. Do what you must. As well as the main 7-level IGF finalist game, the full version also offers a wealth of unlockable content, including one extra that’s so awesome I swear I’m running my second-playthrough pantless.
I wanted my next post to be about a game, but this is too fun not to share. Petri Purho has put up a gallery of crayon drawings he collected from various other indie developers at GDC this year.
Thanks for the tip, Data... who also happens to be the artist of the above image!
Scott Sharkey wrote a nice little round-up for the all the indie video interviews 1UP did at GDC last month. The feature has links to the developers’ interviews, and their websites, along with a nice photo of each one (which I’ve collected in the image above). Always great to see the beautiful faces behind the games!
No matter where they’re coming from, there’s one thing you hear over and over again: “It’d be nice to make money from this, but I’ll keep doing it anyway.” If they have anything in common, it’s a simple love of the art and a compulsion to make their ideas real.
Also, check out this great clip from DL.TV, where 1UP’S Garnett Lee expresses his admiration for Crayon Physics Deluxe and Fez (starting around 1:30):
His descriptions of the games are pretty spot-on, in my opinion!
Nick Waanders, of Slick Entertainment, has released the slides for his and mare’s N+ postmortem. Slick did the development for N+ for XBLA.
Kotaku actually has a nice write-up of the game, where they laud, among other things, the excellent multiplayer co-op:
Single player is great and all, but the game really transforms itself in multiplayer mode. I’m not talking about the Survival Mode or the Race Mode here, but the four-player co-op. Teaming up with three other (good) players completely changes the experience. Playing over the same levels in single player mode the teams I have gotten with have come up with some truly innovative and entertaining ways to use our numbers to our advantage.
I’m seriously (srsly) sad that I’m nowhere near an Xbox 360 with Live support right now. Good co-op is so rare in games…
Matt Hammill, funky, fearless creator of IGF Student Showcase nominated Gesundheit!, has been a busy, busy man. After IGF (which was fun, man—sucks I got sick!), he finished school, joined an animation studio, and even released a children’s book. Which is all thoroughly rad (congrats, Matt!), for sure, but, let’s be honest, what we here at TIGS want is more of that super cute, hand-drawn, homemade gaming goodness. Thankfully, he’s been “pluggin’ away” at that too!
