Earlier this year I attended Global Game Jam at USC. Showing up to the party a bit late, I ended up forming my own group of one, a perfect opportunity to make an exploration into the world of “art games”, or so I thought. The result after three days was Bird and Fish, which can be downloaded here.

Music by Adam Lederer.

GDC, how I love thee.

An interview with Raph made it into this month’s issue of Official Xbox Magazine UK Edition.

Fancy!

things that happened in 2008 in no particular order:

-Made four indie games (one on Xbox Live Community Games!)
-Graduated college on time (and in debt)
-Went to GDC
-Went to Art of Play
-Went to TIGJam
-Interviewed at bunch of game companies
-Got a job as a game designer
-Moved to California
-Had a spinal tap

Onward ho!

sin(Surfing) is featured on this week’s Bytejacker, the gentleman’s preferred indie games web based tv show. Check it out!

Also, due to popular demand, I am pleased to release the sin(Surfing) OST by Adam Lederer! We meant it as a thank you to everyone who supported us by buying the game, but since we have no way of actually verifying anything, you have to promise not to break the honor system OK?

DOWNLOAD

A hotbed of independent developers in the Arizona desert gathered for 72 hours of heated game development, spirits ablaze, their eyes burning with passion. The weather was just fine thank you.

Having migrated to the retail world, I’ve been somewhat lax with my indie work, passing up the TIGSource Demakes Competition for lack of determination. Surprisingly, there don’t seem to be that many people who attempt to straddle both the indie and big budget commercial line, with exception of Rod Humble of course. Somehow he alone has been able to occupy both ends of spectrum, leading the super casual Sims Series and finding time to make art games like the Marriage. My hero.

TIGJam showed up with perfect timing, reinvigorating the indie spirit and squeezing those brain oranges dry for their creative juices. I went with the goal of working on a Gamma3D entry, spending a good amount of time bouncing ideas back and forth with Steve Swink (buy his book!) and others before finally giving up and starting work on Space Harriet in the Third Dimension. In the end, the general consensus seemed to be that anaglyphs, though quite interesting from an aesthetic point of view, tend to lend themselves to gimmicky mechanics with most concepts working just fine without them.

Space Harriet attempts to shoehorn in 3D gameplay by having enemies of different sizes but similar look spawn at distances where the perspective renders them identical (i.e. a big enemy from far away and a small enemy up close). The player then deals with this “depth deception” by using the interocular distance to be the true judge of enemy proximity, and responding with a carefully timed variable range attack. Does it work at all? You be the judge.

DOWNLOAD (Art by Kyle Pulver, Music by Adam Lederer)

Unsurprisingly, Space Harriet wasn’t accepted into the show, but even after playing the final entries, I’ve still yet to be convinced of the viability of the anaglyphic medium. On the other hand, in theory these sort of games have the potential to bring players to a new level of immersion, so maybe that would have been a better focus rather than incorporation into the gameplay mechanics?

Sin(Surfing) (200): Deleted it. It looks like Line Rider on an Apple IIe. Yuck.

-Forum Guy

Line Rider on an Apple IIe? Fuck, I wish!

HD? Meet stylish black borders.

sin(Surfing) now available for Xbox Live Community Games! But why Greg, can’t I already get it for free on this very site? Absolutely. Also note that the game is entirely playable within the time limit of the free trial version. HRM…

Still, if people do buy the game, I’d be plesantly surprised. Support the Guerilla Freeware initiative!