Indie Game Dev Forums Now Open…

Hey folks,

The mission of this site is to inspire game developers to do interesting and innovative games. To help make that happen, forums are now available. Feel free to use it as a resource to post game dev ideas and to get feedback on your games.

The forum will be focused on discussing new platforms, design mechanics, and experimental games…with the goal of accelerating the development of new, compelling, and innovative games in the community.

Enjoy…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/forums/

Indie Game Dev Quote of the Year…

Hey folks,

Every year, we have an “Indie Game Dev Quote Of The Year”… that is a profound quote/phrase that applies to indie game developers…

I had the opportunity to interview one of the senior producers of EVE Online, Torfi Olafsson…and at the end, he has an inspiring comment…that wins the honor of “Indie Game Dev Quote of the Year”…

You can listen to it here…

The full interview will be posted in a few weeks 🙂

Hey Indies…Are You This Motivated…

Hey,

I got an e-mail from the HeyZap team about their latest new viral game.

You may recall that they made a huge viral hit before called Swinefighter…you can check out the interview here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/?p=1220

Last week, there was this whole issue with a 6 year old that was potentially on a hot air balloon alone. It all turned out to be a miscommunication, but a lot of press covered the event.

Later that day, the HeyZap folks made a simple viral game about the event…check it out here…
www.balloonboygame.com

They finished the game in a night.

I think it’s a reminder to all indies that we’re in an era where successful games can be created in a day. I see indies spending days and months deciding on a game idea. We are in a day and age where prototyping can happen in a few hours.

While most folks take weeks to decide on a game, HeyZap made a hit in less than a day.

For the indies out there, I think this is a good post to remind us how fast you can go…what you can do…and what’s possible…when you’re motivated.

Matthew Talks About Developing the Casual Game “Little Things”

Matthew, from Klick Tock, talks about developing the Little Things game…

You can download it here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-klick-tock-games-interview.mp3

or listen to it here…

Read the rest of this entry »

Free Social Games Book + Maker…

Hey folks,

Folks have mentioned that it would be cool to give away free and useful stuff on the show.

Taking that to heart, I’ve arranged for some free goodies to be given away each month.

This month, I’ve convinced a team that wrote a new book + toolkit to make Social Games to allow me to give it away for free. Of course, you can pay $24.95 for it on Amazon.com…or you can download the book + code here free 🙂

Here is the book…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/social-game-book.pdf

Here is the code…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/BookCode.zip

Here is the Word document to fill out to generate your own MMORPG on Facebook…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/fun-social-mmo-generator.doc

Take care and enjoy…Forums will be coming soon and you can discuss ways to get your Social Game up there 🙂

Note: The group that wrote the book is dedicated to helping students do games…so students can use their forums for free help…click here to visit their forums

The Unity iPhone SDK Contest Winner Is…

Kahoots!
http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/kahoots-designer-diary

Congratulations…here is their game entry…
Hi everyone! We’d like to make Kahoots!

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/07/31/kahoots-intro-cut-scene/

Kahoots is a fun, crime-themed puzzle game modeled entirely in clay. We’ve been developing it using the iPhone’s screen size, but the Objective-C learning curve has really put a roadblock in our path. Here’s an article about our struggles:

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/05/22/one-step-forward-nine-miles-back/

We’d LOVE to use Unity3D for the project. It uses similar rules as a game called Set, if you’ve ever played that. It’s funny and challenging and it looks really cool. There are 50 levels in the game, with 5 game types and 2 modes – Story Mode and Quickplay Mode.

Nearly all of the graphics and cut-scenes for the game are finished, and we’re already a licensed Apple developer. All we really need is a Unity iPhone license to plug in the assets, and we’re off to the races!

If you want to try the Closed Public Beta build from a few months ago, please send me an email:

info@untoldentertainment.com

Finally, here’s the Designer Diary for the game:

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/kahoots-designer-diary

Thanks! And good luck, everyone! (It’s great to see so many people interested in making graphic adventure games!)

***
Stay tuned for more contests coming up 🙂

Unity iPhone Contest Finalists Announced…

Hey folks,

The finalists for the contest have been announced. They are below. You can vote on your favorite one and the winner will be announced September 12th, 2009. Voting is open until 11:59 PM, September 10th.

Thanks again to everyone that participated…

Cast your vote for the finalist below by filling out the finalist number in the comment box below…finalists are not allowed to vote…all ballots are private.

Finalist #1:
Justin:
I’m an technical artist/designer at a small studio developing games for XBLA/PSN and will be jumping into IPhone dev in my spare time with a programmer coworker. I’d love to get ahold of Unity for development though the costs seems a bit high for the initial investment in making apps.

One project I plan on making is a 3D stylized version of a physics based destruction game similar to Crush the Castle.

http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle

The game won’t revolve around the medieval genre but the mechanic will be similar with a much more diverse upgrade system.

The few open source engine solutions I’ve looked into seem very viable, though I know getting Unity would be a huge advantage!

Finalist #2:
Thamster:
My proposal is a revision to a relatively popular previously released amateur iphone game iGate 3d. I put this out on the iphone app store to mixed reviews.

The premise was a portable version of the popular valve game Portal. Having hand written the engine myself in 2 months as a hobby project, I would think it would be interesting to contrast the amateur implementation with one made using a professional engine like Unity.

I wanted to see how difficult it would be to implement the portal algorithm in js instead of c++ and wanted to add a time rewind mechanic similar to the one seen in Braid.

If I win, I would be willing to release some snippets of the algorithms involved for both of those mechanics to the unity community!

Vote for me!

Finalist #3:
Sabotender:
Hi, my name is Thomas Beswick, and i am the Lead Designer of Dark Codex studios.
We are active indie developers and have a close partnership with Tumbleweed Interactive (who have released an iPhone game already) and iPhone publisher Chillingo.

As such we would greatly appreciate a Unity iPhone SDK, especially as we allready have experience using Unity Indie.

Our planned iPhone game is a classic point n click adventure, however our game will utilize a more modern appearance as we are planning to have many layers of paralax scrolling backgrounds, and modern particle effects. Our first iPhone game will be set at a very low price, and will focus mainly on telling the story.
If the game is successfull we have many more games planned and documented.

Best of luck to us all
Yours,
Thomas Beswick
Dark Codex

Finalist #4:
John:
Hi all!

Busker Games is a team of seasoned industry vets from triple-A studios, who’ve worked on titles including Halo, Guild Wars, Dungeon Siege, and Total Annihilation.

We’re breaking loose to try our hand at smaller and more personal games! Currently we’re getting started using Unity Indie, and working on a handful of smaller ideas for the iPhone.

One of our planned ‘big’ projects revolves around some of our guys who were original artists on the Liesure Suit Larry series, and will be a casual (in the ‘original’ definition of the word, circa 1970) adventure game style homage to the King of Kitsch.

Good ‘ol American fun, hopefully just clean enough to pass Apple’s review board. 🙂

We’re still a bootstrapped team, scraping together resources for macs and a handful of Unity Indie kits, and would be greatly honored and cavorting for joy if you chose us!

Thanks! Great idea guys!

John Gronquist
Busker Games LLC

Finalist #5:
Proposal:

Revamped version of Atari’s classic S.T.U.N. Runner mixed with Wipeout elements. This game would be perfect for the iPhone’s Accelerometer/Tilt for a control schema.

Already have a Unity3d Indie prototype of the game made.

Thank you.

Finalist #6:
Jean-Francois:
Hi, my name is Jean-François Moulin and I’m a professional developer. When not at work, I am prototyping the following game idea with a small assembled team in unity indie.

The game I propose is a stripped down (probably space) RTS where you have to defend a base (planet) with units created by the user using lego like addon.

The player can add an addon and an effect to any base units. This allow for very custom units where all combinations of units/addons/effects are possible.

Unit creation controls will stay very simple to allow for a fast paced game.

The game is centered on the planet defense, but there will be moons that players can use to build additional defenses on depending on the stage.

Enemies will come from all sides and will force the player to dispatch his units strategically around the planet while managing energy that allows him to power his units.

This is not a tower defense revamped, though you need to defend something. The presentation, gameplay, and mechanics are very different. (2d side scrolling style)

The game is more designed than this, but this is enough to give the idea.

Finalist #7:
Brandon:
Proposal overview:
A “pokemon” style game where players create and raise “fighter pets” on their phones to fight against other players’ fighter pets. Similar to
Duels (http://www.duels.com) where players can train their pets to become better at different skills. The game will be connected to Facebook to allow players to play against other players on the popular social networking site. Pets can be placed in real world locale by integrating with the iPhone’s internal camera.

Finalist #8:
Ryan:
Hi everyone! We’d like to make Kahoots!

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/07/31/kahoots-intro-cut-scene/

Kahoots is a fun, crime-themed puzzle game modeled entirely in clay. We’ve been developing it using the iPhone’s screen size, but the Objective-C learning curve has really put a roadblock in our path. Here’s an article about our struggles:

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/2009/05/22/one-step-forward-nine-miles-back/

We’d LOVE to use Unity3D for the project. It uses similar rules as a game called Set, if you’ve ever played that. It’s funny and challenging and it looks really cool. There are 50 levels in the game, with 5 game types and 2 modes – Story Mode and Quickplay Mode.

Nearly all of the graphics and cut-scenes for the game are finished, and we’re already a licensed Apple developer. All we really need is a Unity iPhone license to plug in the assets, and we’re off to the races!

If you want to try the Closed Public Beta build from a few months ago, please send me an email:

info@untoldentertainment.com

Finally, here’s the Designer Diary for the game:

http://www.untoldentertainment.com/blog/kahoots-designer-diary

Thanks! And good luck, everyone! (It’s great to see so many people interested in making graphic adventure games!)

– Ryan

Finalist #9:
Michael:
Proposal: An Augmented Reality Platformer

Players can choose from different obstacle courses, that can start either at a defined map location or from the player’s immediate spot. They then run, jump and use special abilities they can pick-up to defeat enemies and surmount obstacles.

Previous level attempts by the player or those shared by other players can be overlayed on the course to give players someone to pace against.

Players would also be able to create their own obstacle courses and share them online either for reuse at other locations or for specific map locations allowing them to integrate real-world obstacles into the challenge.

Finalist #10:
Mike:
Proposal: A “base defense” science fiction themed game

I’m a professional developer who works with a pair of artists to develop iPhone apps outside of our day jobs. I also have almost a decade of experience in the games industry, having shipped 12 titles as a developer and 6 as a test engineer. I have tried the Unity iPhone demo and I’m very impressed; and the technical artist on my team has made some pretty impressive demos in a short amount of time.

My game idea is inspired from the type of large starship battles familiar from Star Trek and Star Wars. You command a starship, which must defend itself from wave after wave of attacks by enemy craft. With each enemy you destroy, you gain resources which can be used to repair or upgrade your ship. Additionally, there will be a mechanic which allows you to divert power to and from different systems, which adds a real-time element to a genre that is traditionally mostly passive. For example, if enemies are attacking from the front of the ship, the player can divert power from the rear shields to the front in order to minimize the damage received. This “power” as I envision it is a separate, renewable resource as opposed to the “cash” received from destroying enemies. (But your ship’s total power capacity/renewal rate/etc. can have possible upgrades purchased with cash.)

As the game progresses, players will see their starship evolve into whatever they choose, depending on their play style. I want to avoid the “golden path” style gameplay which rewards only one “correct” set of decisions. Any “captain” should be able to guide their ship the way they see fit.

I could dive into more detail but I’ll keep this short for now.

Thank you for your consideration.

Finalist #11:
Pacific:
Short Description:
Solve (language-learning) puzzles in an immersive, mysterious world!

Game Genre:
3d adventure game (educational)

Background/Purpose:
I live on Guam, a small American island south of Japan. English is the predominant language here, but the language of our elders (Chamorro) is dying out… it’s rarely spoken among younger generations. There are many recent efforts to revive this endangered language among kids and teens (following successful practices taken by the Maori in New Zealand), but there’s still much work to be done toward preserving our island’s rich culture. By applying the Chamorro language to new technology and media (i.e. an iphone game that can also be ported to an online format), youth will be able to engage with the language in a more relevant environment.

Description:
Using the great new tutorials being put out by Unity (e.g. http://bit.ly/DPDNW), I plan to initially develop a single-level 3d world. As the main character, you will travel about and solve a series of nine puzzles in order to complete the narrative (very similar to classic adventure games). Each puzzle will require the application of beginner-level Chamorro (example: unlock a door by solving a Chamorro riddle).

Ideal User:
Youth (ages 9-15), and others, who are interested in applying their Chamorro language skills.

Additionally, I should note that this game will not make millions of dollars. In fact, I plan to make it freely available. 🙂 But, it will fill a significant need in providing youth with a relevant way to engage with their grandparents’ language.

Future Expansion:
I envision this project as a step toward creating a series of games with increasingly difficult language puzzles (to correspond with a person advancing toward language fluency).

Additionally, I’d love to repurpose the game for other endangered languages. In other words, I’d use the same immersive world but change the language used in the puzzles.

About myself:
I recently completed grad school with an MA in instructional technology. My studies focused on creating educational exhibits and websites for museums, but I also took quite a few classes in game design. Until now I’ve created games using java or actionscript 3.0, but I’m looking to branch out.

I also already have an iphone developer license, and believe it or not, a subscription to Unity Developer magazine (but no copy of Unity software yet). I’m dying to jump right in, and I look forward to sharing/blogging the game design process.

****

Those are all the finalists…cast your vote below. Finalists are not allowed to vote. The ballot votes are private.

Unity iPhone SDK Contest Update…

Hey folks,

Some people have asked about the results of the contest…the general contest is closed…and I’ll post the finalists later today. People will have 1 week to vote on the finalists and after that the winner will be announced. Thx 🙂

Brooke Talks About Designing Alternate Reality Games

Brooke of Giant Mice talks about designing Alternate Reality Games

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/arg-giantmice-interview-final.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Read the rest of this entry »

Alternate Reality Gaming Series…

Hey folks,

The next few weeks will cover a specific sub-genre of games known as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)…I attended ARGFest-o-con and interviewed various ARG designers and players and got some interesting game design perspectives.

I hope you enjoy the series. The interviews will go on for the next 3 to 4 weeks. Feel free to add comments and any game design insights you have about ARGs 🙂

If you are an ARG designer and want to be interviewed for the series, send an e-mail to the show… support*****at****indiegamepod**dot******com

Take care,
Action