Utah Indie Developer Night, Fall 2006
The Utah Indie Game Developers met again on Thursday night, October 19th. It was more games, more pizza, and more PEOPLE than ever. Greg's last count was 39, but we may have missed a couple of folks. Alas, there were a lot of people from previous meetings who didn't make it this time, and I missed seeing them this time. But there were many new and familiar faces, and it was good to spend time chatting with as many of them as I could.

ITT Tech Students
Once again, we had a lot of students from ITT Tech who were in the multimedia or game design programs. One thing I have to admit that these "game development trade schools" are doing right is focusing on COMPLETED projects. Working on small or large game projects, I've found that game development often runs into the same hurdles every single time. The larger the scope and scale of the project, the larger the hurdles, but they are usually overcome by exactly the same methods. I think completing small games with 9-week dev schedules really does train people to tackle much larger games.

So it was awesome to see them and see some of the projects they were working on. I saw a couple of unnamed projects - one was an old-school style RPG which had only been in development for a couple of days, and the other was a side-scroller action game where you play a dragon burning (burninating?) peasants and trees. Good stuff!

Frogs and Furniture
Some of the Headgate guys had a game (using the Flat Red Ball game engine?) in early development about moving furniture. What's so fun about that? Well, you are supposed to be a very short-handed moving company, so you have to use wild, Rube-Goldbergesque tools to somehow transport the funiture from the moving truck to the front door of the house. For the most part, all they had was a giant rubber-band type thing that was flinging couches and chairs around in very amusing ways, so it looked like a good start.

Ken Grant had a game that people just called, "The Frog Game." I don't know if it has a real name, but it's about... frog racing. Across Lilly pads. In 3D. With lots of dangers and tricks and the ability to squish other frogs by jumping on them (or the chance to get squished yourself).

Casters, Monks, and Boss Demons
Mike Smith, of Elecorn.com, was once again showing Caster. The game is looking better each time he shows it. This time, we got to see how the player can move the terrain as part of gameplay, creating land-bridges to cross terrain, or escaping monsters by growing the terrain under your feet. We also got to see the giant scorpion boss monster. This is extremely cool. I told him he MUST finish this game soon, because I want to do more battling against giant boss-monsters.

Mike Rubin was there with Vespers 3D. I couldn't see how much had changed - the game still looks absolutely beautiful. The candle flame was flickering now, and the game has a cool cinematic introduction. It looked like more of the terrain surrounding the abbey was filled in. I REALLY can't wait for this game, either. Unfortunately, Mike is really hurting for art content right now. (Oh, and Mike - if you are reading ths, Cubix Studio might be able to handle the character stuff.... I don't know why I didn't think about this while talking to you).

The Flowers brothers were there (representing Mythyn Interactive) were there showing off LinkRealms. This is another game that's REALLY looking sharp and near-complete. I watched over Herb's shoulder as he took on a boss demon (was it a demon?) with other players in the game, and it was beautiful. Fire rained from the sky as deadly spells pelted the demon, and it looked like a lot of fun. Herb later said that most of the "hack and slash" type elements were in the game already, but they were really trying to add more content for non-combat gameplay.

As you can tell from the accompanying screenshots, these games are looking pretty dang good. I think they will represent the indies quite well when they are complete. Go Utah Indies!

Other Fun Stuff
This time we had a woman circulating amongst the ranks - which caused some to pause in their explaining of what engine was powering what game and so forth. But that wasn't nearly as big a deal as the discovery that she's actually a freelance GAME REVIEWER. That caused some jaws to drop and the occasional mad scramble to find out what kinds of games she liked.

Another tidbit I picked up was that the long standing demo-scene event, Pilgrimage, looks to be over. Some of those involved would like to fill it's void with a similar event dedicated to indie gaming and indie game development. Game-in-a-day competitions, LAN party gaming, etc. If this gets off the ground, it could be a lot of fun.

As always, this was an exciting event, and I got the chance to meet a lot of cool people with a passion for game development. I was really looking forward to this all month, and it didn't dissapoint. I am already excited about the next one, which should be in January.

And Steve Taylor told me I have to "throw my hat over the fence" and commit to showing Apocalypse Cow next time. So I'm committing now. I'm going to be "udderly" humiliated if I'm not showing my game then. (Actually, I was TRYING to get it ready to show for this week, honest.... just didn't quite get there.)
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:02 AM (Permalink)