distractionware: devlog

Here’s a few screenshots of the current game I’m working on. For the moment, we’re calling it Nexus City. The game’s an RPG set in an alternate Arizona, and I’ve been working on it for the last 10 days or so with Jonas Kyratzes for RPGDX’s just finished Alternate History Challenge. (Jonas is the creator of Phenomenon 32, an amazing exploration platformer that far more people should play.)

We didn’t finish it for the deadline, being an RPG and all, but we have made some pretty amazing progress on it. We’re hoping to have it finished in a couple of weeks!

Before that, though, I’m taking this weekend off to make something for Ludum Dare 18! If you’re within travelling distance of Cambridge, why don’t you join us? You can find out more in this TIGSource thread.

TIGSource’s Game by it’s cover contest has come to an end! I’ve nothing finished myself for the deadline. I took a screenshot of how the game currently looks, though! I’m really quite excited about the direction it’s going in, so I’ll probably keep working on it for a while.

I’m just back from Berlin Indie Game JAM – this year I decided to take it a bit easier than last year, and mostly worked on developing my RPG engine for this week’s RPGDX challenge. I did finish one little jam game, though, a silly 3-hour collaboration with Chrisjan called Wamlevraw. For the theme Warvelmaw.

Current focus: my RPGDX game! Should have something to post about that before the end of the week.

RPGDX are hosting a week long RPG creation challenge in August, with the theme Alternate History! I’ll almost certainly be taking part in this one; RPGDX compos, like TIGSource compos, are sort of a big deal for me.

Check it out here! Consider taking part

I’m back from the World of Love conference! Speaking for a whole half an hour was a bit of a scary experience for me, but I think it went ok. I’ll post some more about that soonish. (Rock Paper Shotgun have a great writeup of the conference here!)

This weekend we also held a game jam in London! Here’s something I contributed to on the Sunday evening of the jam, called Blind Faith. It was the last three hour challenge of the weekend and I was kinda jammed out, so I just made a bunch of music, sound effects and 3D models for Richard Perrin so he could do something with them. I think it turned out pretty well!

I took it pretty easy in general over the weekend jam, but I did work on a few little things that I’ll eventually finish up and post. In particular I’ve probably spent just a little too long working on something called Vegetable Game…

This was a pretty intense month. Looking forward to things slowing down in July, and maybe having time to work on something a little bigger than the minigames I’ve been doing lately.

Without a doubt, this was the most intense jam I’ve ever been to. I ended up working on a total of eight games, only one of which I’ve managed to finish. And at this jam, all eight of my games were made for three hour challenges – compare that to Berlin last year, where only four of my games were made that way. (And I didn’t even do all the challenges this time!)

What I could, probably should do is just take a couple of hours tomorrow and finish up all the other games, but what I think I’d actually rather do is spend the next two weeks finishing up the games properly, maybe taking a day or two for each.

Here’s a few screenshots from the rest of my jam games:

Here’s the themes I used for my games, by the way : “The Dead“, “Finnegans Wake“, “Fish, Summertime and Heat“, “White Hole“, “Sega Dreamcast VMU“, “a game called Garden of Delight“, “Photographs“, and “Escape“. Try matching the screenshots to the themes!

Most people were far better at finishing stuff than I was! Check out the rest of the games from the jam at the Official Cambridge Friendship Club website!

TIGJam UK 3 is underway I’m having lots of fun and working on cool stuff! Sadly I’ve yet to actually *finish* anything, so what I’m probably going to do is quickly finish up all my half finished games next week and release them all together. Here’s a few previews!

Tickets are now available for TIGJam UK 3, which is being held in Cambridge again. I’m really looking forward to this – it’s the first big proper jam here since I moved! The last TIGJam was the weekend after I finished up VVVVVV, and I didn’t really have the energy to do much of anything. This time I hope to do a much better job of meeting people and collaborating!

Interested in coming? You can find out more here!

Haven’t posted much here lately. Sorry about that! I recently moved to Cambridge, and with preparing to move and settling in I haven’t really done a whole lot of work in the last few weeks. However, I’ve gotten some momentum on a new project since I arrived, so I should have something to share soon

Last weekend I went to a small jam hosted by Honeyslug‘s Ricky Haggett in London, and made two games – one is a two player shooter, which is shaping up nicely, and which I’ll probably post in a day or two once I’ve tweaked a few things and tested it out on other people. And the other is probably not worth playing, heh.

There are a whole bunch of different jams happening this summer that I’m planning to go to:

Ludum Dare 17 is this weekend, and a couple of people are getting together in CB2 Bistro, Cambridge to work on our games together. Please come along if you’re in the area and would like to take part!

TIGJam:UK 3 is also taking place in CB2 Bistro, on the 4th-6th June! More details this thread on TIGSource. Tickets will be announced soon, I think.

World of Love is an indie conference being organised by David Hayward of Pixel Lab, who also organises the Indie Arcade at the Eurogamer Expo. It’s being held at Channel 4, London, at the end of June. I’m going (in fact, I’ve agreed to talk at it, probably about Game Jams), and I’m currently in the process of finding a venue to hold a weekend jam immediately after it. I’ll post more info about this shortly! You can find out about the event here, if you’d like to go: http://www.indiegamesarcade.com/world-of-love/

BIGJam 2, sequel to the amazing BIGJam is scheduled for August in St. Oberholz, Berlin. Really looking forward to this. In fact, I think I’ll try to break my record from last year.

Finally, a few of us in Cambridge are starting a weekly meetup in CB2 Bistro, every Tuesday! I’ll post a little about this once it starts to take some shape.