It’s the end of my first day at GDC, and I got to go to one session today - the Experimental Gameplay Session. I wrote about it last year, and it was one of the big standouts for me. It was interesting, different, and helped remind me why I make games in the first place.
The session today wasn’t quite so inspirational - still interesting, but not quite as large and impact. There’s nothing up there yet, but in the next few weeks there will be info on the official website.
First up was the Indie Game Jam (the official site looks like it hasn’t been updated in years, but there’s a wikipedia page with a good overview). Chris Hecker talked about the most recent event. They did a more low key version than in previous years, and it took place at Chris’ house over Thanksgiving. The theme of the event was audio - not necessarily music, but audio in some way. They prebuilt an audio engine and then got together to make their games. I figured the games would show up online, so didn’t take great notes. They were really quite interesting. The best part of these game jams is that people are trying to do something different. Many of the games are failures, but they’re not like anything you’ve seen before. Gets you thinking.
Next was a group called Kokoromi, with their game festival called GAMMA (Game Art Montreal). They were also interested in music as a theme. They invited game creators to make games and present them as part of a big party event. There was a live DJ and band, and they were given an audio feed of this as input into the games. They started with some tools, like an engine that did beat detection, and the goal was a game that was easy for a drunk person to pick up and play in 5 minutes or less. These weren’t necessarily games I’d want to play, but it looks like another interesting thought event that maybe got games in the hands of more people.
Kim Swift from Valve talked about a game called Portal. At first I had no idea what she was talking about and wasn’t all that interested. But then she showed a demo of gameplay footage and I was a convert! The idea is that you have a sort of portal gun. You can shoot out two portals at any time, and they create a connection between them. If you walk into one, you’ll come out the other. You can put portals on to walls, ceilings, floors - so you can use it to get up on to a high ledge by shooting a portal up there, you can drop something on to a switch by putting a portal on the ceiling above it, and so much more. It was disorienting but really really cool. I’m not hugely interested in FPS games, but this looks like a fun puzzle thing I’ll have to try. Here’s a preview - it’s not the demo they showed today, that’s not available yet.
Then was a PSP game called Crush, being developed by Zoe Mode. This was a crazy one. It’s a commercial game, unlike most of the other things on show (of course the Valve game was commercial as well). It’s a 3d platformer with a crazy twist - you can crush the game into 2 dimensions at any point. I leave it up to a video to explain it better.
I’d be awful at this game. I cannot think in 3d space. I’m guessing that a lot of other people would also have difficulties visualizing the space. The game sounds neat, but impossible to actual play. I guess I’ll just have to get my hands on it to see if they have a good training mode to help explain how the heck to play the thing.
Then we had a very funny Finn talking about his monthly experimental game projects. He said he was inspired by CMU’s Experimental Gameplay Project to make a game every month. He’d have 7 days to make each game. His presentation was funny and interesting, and though none of his games are going to be breakout hits, they all are clever in different ways. Go check them out! His last one, The Truth About Game Development was exceptionally funny.
I’ve gotta get some sleep, there were a bunch more people talking at the EGW and I’ll see when I can get around to typing them up.