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Boston FIG 2014
Sep. 14th, 2014 10:36 pmI was at the Boston Independent Games festival this weekend! I met up with someone from the area that I've been talking to on the GameFAQs classic gaming message board for a while, and attending some talks, mostly about Unreal Engine 4 - I think I need to have a go at it. It was nice to see the variety in ideas of what people were working on, and especially to have so many women presenting games and lectures, a breath of fresh air after the negativity of the last couple of weeks.
Some of the other things that caught my eye:
Kitty in the Box is a game with the simplest controls imaginable, but it has a lovely feel to it - it's a mobile game where you have to hold down a button to slide a cat over an isometric floating landscape and get it into a box without it falling off the end. Definitely a timewaster game, but it's got a great aesthetic.
Knight Squad is absolutely bloody hilarious - it's an eight-player top-down sort of Capture the Flag game where you pick up different weapons and then batter each other fighting to capture the grail in the centre of the map. Playing that with seven other people really made me miss living-room multiplayer - I want to get people together so that games like this can be played, because I don't think the experience would be the same online!
I had my first Oculus Rift experience with a game called, er, Alien Makeout Simulator. In this, you put the helmet on and face this... alien plant woman thing with a load of sets of lips on stalks, and you have to lean in and hover your head near the glowing ones to gain points and affection, while trying to concentrate on not embarrassing yourself by puckering up.
Dash is a relaxing kind of mobile game where you dart across the sky between targets as a sparrow, hopping off lanterns and birds of prey. We know I'm going to gravitate towards anything with birds in it.
Blood Alloy looked great - it's a run and gun game that looks like it has a great pace, with a style of presentation that reminds me of the Megadrive. I didn't get to play it, but I mean to download it as soon as possible!
http://alchemedium.com/ was there with a game called A Tofu Tail - it's an isometric puzzle where you control a cube of tofu that absorbs materials as you pick them up, and you can only roll over tiles matching the last material you absorbed. It isn't out yet, but it looked like it could offer some very interesting puzzles.
And there was an unusual game called Breakers Yard - what struck me about this one was the presentation, as it looked like the kind of graphics that someone making their first project would do, with black outlines and flat colours. I asked the demonstrator about them, and was disappointed that it wasn't a conscious style choice, but just what the person doing the art had been able to manage for the festival. http://protophant.com/
I also ran into someone I work with, who was presenting his card game Moriarty's Machinations - so it would be remiss of me not to mention it!
Some of the other things that caught my eye:
Kitty in the Box is a game with the simplest controls imaginable, but it has a lovely feel to it - it's a mobile game where you have to hold down a button to slide a cat over an isometric floating landscape and get it into a box without it falling off the end. Definitely a timewaster game, but it's got a great aesthetic.
Knight Squad is absolutely bloody hilarious - it's an eight-player top-down sort of Capture the Flag game where you pick up different weapons and then batter each other fighting to capture the grail in the centre of the map. Playing that with seven other people really made me miss living-room multiplayer - I want to get people together so that games like this can be played, because I don't think the experience would be the same online!
I had my first Oculus Rift experience with a game called, er, Alien Makeout Simulator. In this, you put the helmet on and face this... alien plant woman thing with a load of sets of lips on stalks, and you have to lean in and hover your head near the glowing ones to gain points and affection, while trying to concentrate on not embarrassing yourself by puckering up.
Dash is a relaxing kind of mobile game where you dart across the sky between targets as a sparrow, hopping off lanterns and birds of prey. We know I'm going to gravitate towards anything with birds in it.
Blood Alloy looked great - it's a run and gun game that looks like it has a great pace, with a style of presentation that reminds me of the Megadrive. I didn't get to play it, but I mean to download it as soon as possible!
http://alchemedium.com/ was there with a game called A Tofu Tail - it's an isometric puzzle where you control a cube of tofu that absorbs materials as you pick them up, and you can only roll over tiles matching the last material you absorbed. It isn't out yet, but it looked like it could offer some very interesting puzzles.
And there was an unusual game called Breakers Yard - what struck me about this one was the presentation, as it looked like the kind of graphics that someone making their first project would do, with black outlines and flat colours. I asked the demonstrator about them, and was disappointed that it wasn't a conscious style choice, but just what the person doing the art had been able to manage for the festival. http://protophant.com/
I also ran into someone I work with, who was presenting his card game Moriarty's Machinations - so it would be remiss of me not to mention it!
