Ottawa Jam Game Making Headlines!

Kotaku.com recently posted an article about one of the most innovative games to come out of this year's Global Game Jam, Keep Talking and No One Explodes. The gist of it is that one player puts on a VR headset and tries to diffuse a bomb before the timer runs out while their team mates, who can't see the bomb, have to walk them through the procedure because they have the instructions! I haven't had the chance to play this game yet but all my friends who have tell me it's an amazing and totally unique experience. So, big props to everyone from www.keeptalkinggame.com for getting covered by such a prominent gaming news outlet! I wish them the best of luck with the game, the concept is just amazing!

Rare Glimpse Into Ottawa Protonight!

Yves Tourigny, who hosts weekly design sessions at his place, recently got himself set up to do time lapse video of the testing. Here is attempt number one! Those of you who read my post about last weekend's game jam might recognise the first game in the video. Big thanks to Yves for the video!

Another Global Game Jam Come and Gone!

Last weekend I participated in the 2014 Global Game Jam hosted by the Carleton University School of Information Technology. This was my fourth year participating though my usual partner wasn't available so I teamed up with another local board game designer, Daryl Chow to produce what we call Eye of the Hunter.

The Global Game Jam is an event where teams are challenged to create a game in 48 hours based on a theme that's only revealed at the start of the jam. This year the theme was the phrase "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Daryl and I quickly agreed on the idea of giving players unique objective cards in order to work the theme into the game. Since each player has his or her own set of objectives to strive towards, they each view the game from their own perspective. From there we batted around several ideas for game mechanisms and settings before settling on what would become our submitted game. In Eye of the Hunter, two players play food tiles to the board to attract animals in from the forest in order to capture them according to the hunter cards they hold. It's a quick playing game and we are still interested in doing some development on it, mainly striving to get the number of tiles just right to keep the tension up as players hope to play as many of their hunters as possible before the tile supply runs out. If you are interested in checking out the game, there's a print and play version available from the GGJ site. I plan on posting an updated version to Board Game Geek soon as we ended up presenting a slightly different version on the last day of the jam based on things we tried out on the spot.

It was pretty different for me this year. As I mentioned, my usual partner, Leo, wasn't available so I roped in Daryl at the last minute. Leo is usually the one who does the art while I focus on the rules so I got to do the art this time. I'm glad Daryl and I had a pretty firm grip on the game play by the end of Friday as it allowed me to get started on the art Saturday morning. After a bit more testing with Daryl mid-day, I went back home and ploughed through the remaining art tasks, printed the components, assembled them and gave Daryl's rules an editorial pass, leaving me enough time on Sunday to create example images for the rules.

Checking out the games at the Jam on Sunday afternoon was super cool, as always. Though the competition aspect of the event is downplayed, local industry folks are invited to judge each year. This time, top honours went to first time lone wolf jammer Daivuk, a friend and colleague of mine for his game My Own World. I had a feeling he would do well at this!

So, another year, another Game Jam. Man I love it! It's a weekend of super concentrated game design and development, a great learning experience, great practice for the experienced and huge fun every time! I highly recommend participating to anyone who's into game design.

Starwhal Up on Kickstarter

My friends from Breakfall here in town have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help raise money to put the finishing touches on their ridiculously fun game, Starwhal. Hit this link to check out the Kickstarter page and have a look at the game in action. There's even a demo you can play on the web! If you have fond memories of raucous times playing games on the couch with your friends back in high school, then you need to back this project. This game is phenomenal fun!

Image from www.starwhal.com

Not the Only Board Game at the Jam This Year!

This year was a little different at the Ottawa Global Game Jam site. How? Well, our game, Heart Rate Speed Date was not the only non-digital game!

Game Jam 2013: Day 2

Well, ok! After scrapping Friday's false start, things, finally, coalesced today as we started throwing up mechanism ideas based on a theme idea we had passed up on last night.

Oh, so, speaking of theme. The whole shtick with the jam is that you only find out the theme you'll have to incorporate at the start of the jam after the keynote video. I couldn't share it with all of you until today because of the six hour time difference between us and the farthest jam site in Hawaii (this is the GLOBAL Game Jam, after all). So, the cryptic as hell theme this year? An audio clip of a beating heart! Ya, I know. Thankfully, teams are free to interpret this any way they like. Much of a team's creativity shines through in its interpretation of the theme.

So, blah blah blah, what the heck did we come up with?

Well, we decided to create a game that riffs on the theme by being about matters of the heart while, also, getting your heart rate up. It's called Heart Rate Speed Date, and it's all about playing cards down as fast as you can in a race to match speed dating aficionados with their best possible matches! Check out the pics!

Kicking Off Game Jam 2013

Getting ready to get my jam on for the 2013 Global Game Jam. Extra cool this year as we won't be the only board game! I was able to rope in two friends to also participate this year. I'm super psyched! Oh! The keynote is about to start. I'll keep posting progress throughout the weekend.

Upcoming Events

It's the start of a new year, and with a new year comes all sorts of cool events to check out. So, if you are looking to touch base with me or just want to participate in some awesome game related events, here's a list of the fun times I will be having in early 2013. I hope to see you there.

January 25 to 27: Global Game Jam
If you have a penchant for game design, I highly recommend signing up for this! Teams are tasked with designing a video or board game over the course of a weekend based on a theme that is only revealed at the start of the event. This will be my third year participating and I am so psyched! Events are held all over the world, so check the website for one near you. If you are in the Ottawa area, the jam goes down at Carleton University.
Links:
Global Game Jam Website
Ottawa Game Jam Website

February 2 to 3: Game Summit
For the board gamers amongst you, and I know there are plenty, you should swing by and see me at this year's Game Summit. I loved my time there last year and am really looking forward to doing it again this year. I should be available to demo Roll'n Bump to anyone who hasn't had a chance to play it yet, or for any masters looking to challenge me to a game.
Links:
Game Summit

Some Time in May: Ottawa Game Conference
This event would have been called Game Summit, if the aforementioned board game convention hadn't beaten them to it. For those of you interested in Ottawa's budding video game industry, this show is for you. This will be the conference's second year, and I'm told it will be a massive three day event, up from last year's single day. There will be workshops, talks and demos. If you are in the industry yourself, don't miss it!  The dates for this year haven't been announced yet, so stay tuned to the website for info.
Links:
Ottawa Game Conference

Lunar Bovine Likes Him Some Aion!

My good friend and co-worker Jason and I enjoyed a game of Aion: A Game of Serpents over lunch yesterday. I trounced him pretty good, but he went on to win against our friend Dave, so no harm done. Looks like he dug the game enough to blog about it! And yes, the awesome picture accompanying this post is courtesy of Jason. And, also yes, that's my devilishly handsom ringed finger in the shot.

Global Game Jam 2012 Wrap Up

Once again, the Global Game Jam was a ton of fun. If you're interested in game design and creation and there's a jam site near you, I totally recommend participating. I thought I would post about some of the other games from the Ottawa jam that friends made or that made an impression on me.

Game Jam 2012 Sunday Wrap Up

Well, there you have it, another Global Game Jam come and gone and we had, yet again, the only board game entry in Ottawa. You know what the difference was this year? We made it on time for judging. Oh ya, and subsequently took the top spot in the "Concept" category here in O-town! You can hit this link to check out the Game Jam page and even grab the PDF to print and play.

Game Jam 2012 End of Saturday Update.

My co-designer and I have retreated to our homes to crank the last bit of work out on our game. We're happy with how the game turned out and now it's time for me to write the rules and for him to do up the artwork. Tomorrow we'll have a nice looking submission full of loop making snaky goodness!

If you want to check out all sorts of photos from the event, hit up this Facebook link.

Game Jam 2012 photo update!

Game Jam 2012: Noon On Day 2

Well, here I am, groggy and woozy as I stumble in for day two of the Game Jam. No photos yet but I can tell you about the theme and where we are headed with it.

So, the theme is...
The included image! No, seriously, that picture is the theme. The image is called the Ouroboros and has been linked to a number of concepts throughout history. It also has some connections to ancient alchemy, which is one of the angles we are going with. The game we're doing is a tile laying game using tiles representing colours and alchemical runes. Players lay tiles from their hand trying to create closed loops like the snake. Get it!?

I will, hopefully be able to take some pictures of the prototype today and upload them. As far as actual progress on the game, we hope to be happy with the game and started on final graphics tonight.

Game Jam 2012 Day 1

Too tired to give the full scoop. It's 5am and I am finally about to hit the sack. My partner and I weren't leaving until we had something playable and we finally got something we felt alright about a couple of hours ago. So, hopefully I'll have more info for you tomorrow and maybe even pictures. Until then? Good night everybody.