Utah Indie Night - Fall 2007
The Utah Indie Game Developer Night was at ITT Technical Institute tonight instead of Wahoo / NinjaBee. That was different. What was cool about it was that we actually had an overhead projector on which to demo our games in a more formal presentation. What sucked about it was that we actually had an overhead projector on which to demo our games in a more formal presentation. We had over 45 people attending tonight, which was very cool (and a little crowded). We had MASSIVE supplies of pizza that were actually almost all gone by the end of the night.

Indies are to free food like Pac-Man is to dots, I guess.

We had three games demoed, plus Greg (our fearless leader and orchestrator of the indie night from the beginning) showed off his 2D shooter a little afterwards. The three games formally presented included Cartel Games' Mythic Blades - a new and improved version, actually. It was pretty sweet, played well, and looked so good it had one ITT student in the audience ask, "Who does your modeling, God?"

Next was Frayed Knights, presented by yours truly. People asked a lot of questions, and to my surprise not all of them were, "Why don't you leave the podium and let the next presenter speak?" So that was a plus. One of the guys asking questions probably has a future in QA, because the convoluted array of elements he asked me to demonstrate result in a pretty major bug where the interactive object dialog popped up and just wouldn't go away. I think I ended up explaining that the game was "only five months into development" about a hundred times. I should really learn to come up with more creative excuses. I also got some very good recommendations and feedback on the game!

Oh, and the inevitable questions came up concerning Apocalypse Cow. Short answer: It is still in development, because I've spent far too much time and money on it already. But I'm looking at changing technology behind it, and it has become a secondary priority.

Mike Rubin presented Vespers 3D. The game looks sweeter every time I look at it, and it really was the highlight of the evening for me. Unfortunately, his big challenge is the same as that of too many indies - CONTENT. Well, affordable content. I think he said he's on his fourth animator at this point. These guys start off great, but lose interest over time - or get hired by a game company that offers a steady, decent paycheck. I mean, how do you argue against that?

There's still no ETA on when Vespers 3D will be completed. It really depends upon how soon the last elements can get completed. It sure looks like he's got most of a game there, with just a few objects and NPCs missing (or depressingly static). The voice-overs sound good, the graphics are awesome, the "feel" of the game is nicely grave and ominous... it's just incredible.

Some other folks that were there included Q-90 (who are working on... an adventure game? They left early so I didn't get to talk to them), a representative of Caravel Games (makers of the Deadly Rooms of Death series), Eric Peterson (of Cartel games), Herb Flower (of LinkRealms), Steve AKA "Dreamer" of Dream RPG Online, Lane Kiriyama of Wahoo / NinjaBee, and Troy Leavitt of Disney.

I mention Troy because I used to work with him at SingleTrac and Acclaim, and consider him to be a very sharp game designer. I WISH I knew as much about game design as he does. He thinks about game design on levels I didn't even know existed until I met him.

And there were many others I'm forgetting. It was a full house.

Anyway, it would probably have been a better evening if that guy from Rampant Games had shut up more, but otherwise it seemed to be a major success - if far too short.

At least nobody went home hungry.

UPDATE: Check out Greg Squire's commentary on the evening as well!


(Vaguely) related stuff-o-la:
* Utah Indie Night - Summer 2007
* Utah Indie Night - Spring 2007
* Mike Rubin on In-Game Cinematics, Indie-Style
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Labels: Frayed Knights, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:15 AM (Permalink)