Parties & Events - Booth Crawl / IGDA Party / Gamma 256

Booth Crawl

First of all, there wasn’t much of an Expo, hence there wasn’t much of a booth crawl. Still, it was at least an excuse for people to come check things out, receive a free drink ticket (or several really if you just kept entering and leaving), and schmooze. If there’s one thing I have to mention about MIGS’ expo, it’s the way they lit the space it occupied. Yes, the way they lit it. Just look at the pictures and you’ll see what I mean. There’s no way they could do this in such a huge space occupied by the larger shows like GDC (well, technically they could and there are actually huge trade shows lit like this but it’s obviously expensive as hell). It was all very eye-pleasing and something I had never really experienced before so that was nice.

They had three drink tables spaced throughout the room, half of which was one of the lunchtime cafeterias. The award goes to Ubisoft for the coolest, most extravagant booth design. Like I said, there wasn’t a whole lot to see and the free grabs on the tables were standard fare so I didn’t bother picking anything up – I certainly have enough pens and whatnot to last me for a long time. I did take some time to play a little Wii, trying out the Zapper peripheral with Zelda: Twilight Princess. I got so engrossed I didn’t notice them shutting down the other consoles, which stunk because I wanted to try Super Mario Galaxy too. Oh well.

IGDA Party

Unlike the GDC, this wasn’t an IGDA member’s party, it was more of simply an IGDA-hosted reception for all conference attendees. A few of the people I talked to were a bit rumpled by them closing the bar while screening Danny Ledonne’s movie Playing Columbine (which was a substantial 1:30 long), but I’m not a drinker so I couldn’t complain myself. After the movie screening it was mingling and networking as usual. I didn’t stick around too long afterwards, just chatted a bit with people I already knew before ducking out fairly early since I had been up at 5:30 that morning to catch my flight out.

Gamma 256

This was a neat event, run by the group Kokoromi located in Montreal. If that name rings a bell to anyone, it’s likely because they were just announced this week as a finalist in the IGF for Fez, which was nominated for Design Innovation and Excellence In Visual Arts. Gamma 256 showcased eight games that were developed under the guidelines of

• 256x256 resolution or any lesser ratio
• Windows XP support
• Xbox 360 gamepad for input

	Mr. Heart Loves You Very Much This was the one game I didn’t get to play because it was so popular among the attendees. I downloaded it to play instead and wow is it addictive! I couldn’t get past Level 8 though. You know those little sliding puzzle games where the tiles all jumbled up and one is missing and you slide the pieces around in a certain order to re-arrange them to complete the image? That had to have been the inspiration of this game, since you’re doing that and rotating the puzzle, which affect the gravity on your character, causing him to fall “down” to the new bottom of the map. A great example of a simple idea turned into engaging game play.
	Doomed Planet This game was cool, rendered to look like 40’s silent film stock with caption plates for any words spoken. The object was to fly your UFO around the map and look for people with a sign over their head that indicated they were to be abducted, at which point you’d hover over them and draw them up using your beam. Very soon people would start shooting at you, and you can’t move while beaming up victims. The game tracks how many people you collect before you are shot down. If you fly too far left or right you go “out of frame” of the film, a nice touch.
	Dive This game took some experimentation to get the gist of but it wasn’t too bad as far as pick-up-and-play goes. You dive off a boat and proceed downwards into the depths. Watch out for red-colored fish like sharks, squid and jellyfish, seek out blue-colored fish like dolphins, whales and turtles. Other white-colored background fish would occasionally swim by too. You have some sort of sonar pulse you can send out at about 2-3 second intervals that will freeze enemies so you can swim down past them, and talk to the friendly sea creatures, who will expel an air bubble for you to collect. It’s like a game of Frogger as the sea creatures pass horizontal to your vertical movement. As you go deeper and deeper you see leviathans like blue whales and giant squid/jellyfish. Getting hit by a bad fish causes you to lose oxygen. When you run out of air you die. I never made it to the bottom, if there is one.
	Dodge Club You’re a square box dodging around the screen while avoiding a red-colored square that bounces around the screen and a blue-colored square that flies in from off-screen at random locations. The entire game is probably 15x15 pixels because they are huge looking, and the numbers counting up in the background which mark your time take up so much screen space they actually make things harder to see. If you hit the other blocks you’re fried or electrocuted – game over. I believe the record score was somewhere around 56 seconds.
	Bloody Zombies My favorite game. You’re this zombie hunter and you have to collect keys all around the level to open the door to the next level. You wield this plunger-looking device that must be a circular saw or something because it grinds zombies to bits (literally) in a massive spray of pixilated gore. Even better, the blood drains down into the lower levels forming a pool that you swim in, and the saw accelerates your momentum like a boat propeller. So you’re actually using the zombie blood to access areas of the level your character can’t simply jump high enough to reach. Awesome, who doesn’t like killing zombies??
	Passage Of all the games, this was by far the most artistic. You start as a young man, and to the right half of the screen, which is a horizontal slice, everything is compressed and even more pixilated. As you move rightward you pass through time, collecting items along the way (not sure what the items were). Visually, you see the compression start to ease out from the right side and appear to the left as you work your way through the game. Your character also slowly starts to age before your eyes until he’s got gray hair, a bald top and a cane. Eventually you simply turn into a gravestone. You can hookup with a female companion too.
	Celu A sweet physics-based game. Your character runs around certain objects, gaining momentum until you fling yourself off into space, where you arc through a field of stars, collecting them as you pass through. While flying you can control your movement gradually. If you manage to throw yourself high enough from the ground level, you’ll land on the moon. Spin around that, chuck yourself higher through another starfield, and there’s a cat face to land on. If you jump too early of a surface its gravity can pull you back down. Also, your running about objects makes them grow larger and larger for some reason. If you fling yourself up but fail to land on another object, you fly off the screen and it’s game over. This game isn’t available for download.
	StdBits You’re a pixel character on the screen, traversing through several abstract worlds of various challenges and goals. I can’t even explain it because it was all so… weird? I guess abstract sounds better. The screen shot will help you a little bit – in it you see the pixel (you) bumping rectangles (currently the white one) that bounce around to kill the PacMan-like ghosts trying to eat you up. Another game that’s hard to describe, it’s not available to download either. Go figure.

Conclusion

They had several music performers lined up for the evening, but I didn’t stick around much after the first one struck up with a synthesizer and a drum set. My ears felt like they were about to start bleeding. Still, the event was a nice social occasion, playing games and chatting. Can’t think of a better thing to be doing at a games conference.

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