The Yawhg at Bit Bazaar
The Yawhg by Emily Carroll and myself, will be for sale at the first-ever Bit Bazaar!
It will be launching at Bit Bazaar, and then it’ll sold be online a few weeks later.
This is super exciting for me, because I’ve never really sold anything before!
The game will be PC only and sold for $5. There will also be buttons at my booth that I’ll be selling for $1 each!
Here are a few more scenes from the game to whet your appetite!
You Get Out What You Put In
Last night I attended @IGDAToronto’s panel on edumacation, on whether or not formal schooling is the path to successful game… stuff. Panelists talked about game art, game development, and game design pretty indiscriminately, but it seemed “design” got the largest focus because it is the least concrete of the three. It was an interesting debate, but it was clearly five different panelists with two or three sets of opinions and two specific agendas. Debate almost devolved into the realm of pure semantics, but that (blessedly) went nowhere; we have all been down that road and I think the panelists knew that would not really help the audience. I listened through the panel, agreeing and disagreeing, and decided to compose my thoughts here.
If you’re looking to go to school for games, please read this first.
I attended the Feminist Porn Conference
Note: This article has no naughty pictures, but describes some NSFW things and has some NSWF links. Be warned.
When I attended/exhibited at the Vector Game + Art Festival, the bend it took in the appreciation, critique, and questioning of games, art, and their convergence felt like a completely new, challenging, and wonderful experience. It opened my eyes to a lot of things I’d never considered, while remaining completely within my bubble of game development. It left me wanting to see and learn more, and to emerge from the bubble in which I was encased.
Game(?): Pokemon: The Bento League
Introducing the Bento League, a metagame within a metagame.
The Bento League is a game that take place with me as sort of the dungeon master, inside the game of Pokemon. Well, to be more specific, inside a Pokemon battle system emulator.
Here’s a link to the simulator.
Basically, what the Bento League is, is a series of gym leader fights. I have made 8 gym leaders (as well as an Elite Four and Champion), all based around a different type. This puts me at a bit of a disadvantage, because, if you know Pokemon, you know it’s basically a very complex game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Basically I’m just always playing Rock.
You’re allowed to use almost any six Pokemon you want, (barring this list), with any moves the Pokemon can legally learn, and have everything maxed out. They start out at level 100, so there’s no training necessary. Instead, imagine your Pokemon team like a deck in a trading card game.
If you’ve never played Pokemon in a competitive setting before, but would like to start, you should take a look at this website, and search up Pokemon you like.
To sign up to play, just message me on Twitter, my email, or any other way you know to get a hold of me, and we can schedule battles. I’ll definitely help you out if you need any team building advice.
Here’s a sample match, for those curious. (Fighting gym gets destroyed.)
Here’s another match. (The Ice gym is defeated!)
Number of Challengers: 4
A small preview for a game I’m making in an upcoming game jam.
Depression Quest Is Out!
We’ve finally loosed Depression Quest out in to the wilds after a couple of the longest, most difficult months of my life.
It’s all pay what you want because making it be unavailable to people without the cash to pay for it would semidefeat the awareness raising goal that we’d started out with. It’s not “fun”, but it’s honest.
And now I am going to go sleep for a year.
Here’s what some of the final cards look like for my upcoming card game, Without Question.
It’s a pretty silly game in which you play cards on your friends, which forces them to do crazy things (or else they they take damage!)
There’s a bunch of different variations on how play the game (including drinking and strip variants, for those who are bold), and will of course come with a few blank cards to make your very own rules!
Details on how to get the game coming in the next month or two!
Art by the incredible Dom2D.
Will be playable at Vector Game Art Festival.
Make a Game at Night, Get Fired in the Morning
David S. Gallant is a Toronto-local game developer who lost his job after the Toronto Star posted an “expose” of the fact he was a Canada Revenue Agency call centre employee who developed the game “I Get This Call Every Day” in his spare time.
David had not revealed his status as an employee of the CRA at any point before or even to the reporter at the Star, who discovered that fact through some other means.
In the above article I clear up that fact and attempt to combat the coverage from the mainstream media for the past couple of weeks which portrayed David’s game as anti-taxpayer (it isn’t) somehow directly critical of the CRA (it’s never mentioned) and that David was asking for and somehow happy to be fired (definitely not.)
It’s my opinion that the Toronto Star breached of journalistic ethics and standards in their attempt to manufacture a “juicy” story where there was none; there was no value or public good in Gallant being fired even though—by taking vague details of the game to the National Revenue Minister—they knew he would be.
They owe him an apology.
(Of course, that’s never going to happen. But at the very least consider sharing this story to publicly shame them, and if you would like to support David, please considering purchasing I Get This Call Every Day under its pay what you want scheme (min. $2).)
Every game I make, I’m always astonished at how much I’ve learned since the last game I’ve made. It makes me smile.
Damian Sommer on continued learning of videogame development. [February 6th, 2013] (via twitter).
Something I said is on Quote Unquote!
