SpringFling – Beta gameplay video released

I’ve been putting a bunch of time into my iPhone game and am ready to show a quick beta video of some of the new features and art that’s been added so far. Check it out on Vimeo:

Yes, folks. Rocket boost, Silly hats, Googley eyes and an anthropomorphized spring dude. Leave comments!

Boston Area Game Development Meetups

Calling all Boston-area game developers! Many people know and love the Boston Postmortem; a popular game developer meetup and local IGDA chapter for the Boston area. For many, the BPM is a staple industry event but some are not aware of the other meetings for devs in the area. Here’s a list of some lesser known game development related meetups and hubs that feature periodic events or game dev related goodies:

Game Development

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Boston Postmortem – The main monthly game developer meetup in the Boston area and local IGDA chapter. I would drive in from Worcester every month just to attend this back when I was in college. It’s that good. Drink some beer, network, and hear from competent industry speakers. Good times will ensue. Also, the website is a central hub info, with a job board, event board, local company listing, and gobs of local industry news.

Boston Indies - A great monthly meetup put on by Scott Macmillan, previously at BetaHouse, now held at the Asgard in Cambridge. You don’t need to be hardcore indie like Scott to attend, but if you’re not, he might point and laugh at you. Overall, a wonderfully supportive community. Come demo some work in progress projects or just network and eat some pizza.

Boston Unity Group - The bi-monthly meeting of Unity game engine users, held at the Microsoft NERD center or the Asgard in Central Square. Run by Alex Schwartz and Elliott Michell.

NEiA SIGGRAPH - A monthly talk by a leading Game or Film Animator in New England. Usually the fourth Thursday of the month, 7pm at The New England Institute of Art (10 Brookline Place West, Brookline MA, at the Brookline Village D Green line stop).

NE Games SIG - New England Games Special Interest Group puts on some interesting talks and industry events. Come hang with the MIT guys and gals to enjoy some networking and a great location at Microsoft’s NERD building.

Dorkbot Boston / Axiom - Dorkbot is an interesting crowd of hackers, modders, artists, and code monkeys that like to experiment with all things electrical. They’ve done a few game development related events such as a recent talk on interactive fiction and use the Axiom Art Gallery in JP as a venue from time to time. Check out Dorkbot and Axiom for event listings.

NE Digital Artists - North East Digital Artists Group hosts events such as Z-Brush training and advanced Z-Brush workshops. Note that not everything they do is Z-Brush related! Check out their sweet site and help keep the digital artist community alive.

WPI GDC / Speaker Series – Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Game Development Club hosts both development and entertainment events from time to time during the school year. I’m not sure which other schools in the area run similar style events open to the public, but check out the club’s website for details. In addition, the IMGD major at WPI hosts a speaker series throughout the school year consisting of great talks from industry members.

Boston Game Development Meetup Group - There’s actually a Meetup.com group for game development that’s small but interesting. They usually meet at an Au Bon Pain in Cambridge. Some cool guys.

Drinks on Tap – An iPhone developer meetup held at Jillians near Fenway every few months. Recommended for mobile folk.

Purple Blurb – An MIT series on digital writing. Looking at their previous events, they have had some interesting speakers on interactive fiction.

Expos

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Boston GameLoop – Scott Macmillan and Darius Kazemi put together this ‘Unconference” in both 2008 and 2009. A 2010 date has just recently been set! A highly recommended and very down to earth conference for game industry folk only. Very good signal to noise ratio and only the popular talks are chosen.

MIGS – Montreal International Game Summit is a yearly game development conference in Canada. While it’s not exactly in the Boston area, it is definitely worth the hike to attend. Prices are very fair compared to GDC and the quality of sessions definitely rivals it. Highly recommended for students, industry members, and developers of all shapes and sizes.

MIT BIG – MIT’s Business in Gaming is a yearly conference centered around the business of games. Even if you’re not into that sort of thing, the sessions are interesting and it’s worth attending. Parking is horrendous and the 2009 edition fell on the same day at IGC East, but those problems aside, it’s a good one-day event.

IGC East – Although I was personally unable to attend the 2009 edition of IGC East, held in May, I heard good things about this conference and the demo night. Supposed to be accompanied by a job fair, but that fell through for the 2009 edition of IGC East.

More Gaming

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PAX East – Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is coming to Boston March 26th-28th. Woot.

Game Unicon – Do you find yourself going to comic/anime/game conferences only to spend the entire time in the game room and playing in the tournaments? Well check out Game Unicon in Marlborough, MA for non-stop game tournaments, prizes, and LAN’ing.

Improv Boston’s Rock Band night - Check out the monthly Rock Band nights at Improv Boston in Central Square. Rock out and get judged by a panel of Harmonix employees. WPI troupe and Rock Band night regulars Crystal Math pulled off a first AND second place win this past weekend. You should attend if only to see their performances. Harmonix also does RB nights at Great Scott, a rock venue in Boston.

Am I missing anything? Did I mess up any important details? Have I deeply offended any religions? Leave a comment and let me know.

SpringFling – Pre-alpha gameplay

Well, I should have posted this 3 weeks ago, but better late than never, right?

I’m currently developing an iPhone game in Unity and wanted to show a snippet of gameplay for my fans (yeah right, no one actually reads this). This video features an early snapshot of core gameplay. The basic concept is that you’re a spring and your goal is simply to “Go up.” The design is being fleshed out as we speak but the basics are down. There’s no art, no level design, just pure prototype-y goodness. Those who attended the last Boston Indies meeting should be familiar with this, as this is what I demoed on the big screen.

More info after the jump.

SpringFling Pre-alpha Video 1 from Alex Schwartz on Vimeo.

You’ll notice some substantial lag issues, but that’s mostly due to the screen recording software used and the fact that there is still optimization to be done. So yeah, keep checking back for updates on this. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be in beta :) I’m planning on putting in 3 solid hours per night for the next 7 days, if possible. Yay for medium-low scope games!

Great games – Silly designs

It’s no secret I’m a big fan of developers who take a chance with unorthodox designs. This brings me to my latest infatuation with Popcap’s Plants vs. Zombies. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve only played a couple of hours of the game so far but I’ve also been watching my roommate play (and beat) the entire game over my shoulder for the past few weeks. The high concept is simple – Tower defense with flowers on defense and zombies on the offense. If you’ve never heard of the game, it sounds like it either suffers from a bad Japanese to English translation or it’s plain old crazy. It turns out it’s the latter and it also happens to be great fun. Addicting gameplay, great character design, and lots of replay value through minigames make this a unique departure from classic tower defense games. But seriously, take a look at the wall-nut, I dare you not to laugh.

Why is it that controlling a clumsy minotaur in a china shop while trying to retrieve tea cups for customers is so addicting? It’s not just me, as you can see from Blurst.com’s rising popularity. With games like Raptor Copter, Jetpack Brontosaurus, Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, and Minotaur China shop, the names and pitches are some of the strangest out there.

There’s something inherently juvenile about hearing high concepts that are extremely tongue in cheek or even outright based on a pun. (SpringFling anyone?) Frequently through college, game development class assignments were to write a GDD or develop a game idea of some sort. Every time, one or more groups would come up with an idea purely based on the fact that it could get a laugh. With a reckless disregard or forethought of basic elements of gameplay, balance, playability, the team would go forward with a silly idea. Most if not all of these failed before getting too far from the starting gate. Maybe it’s due to a lack of preparation or commitment but it seems both Popcap and Flashbang Studios are heavily invested in their silly ideas and can really pull off a quality game.

Blurst also has an inventive monetization scheme, but that’s the subject for another post. I forsee much more popularity in the future for them, provided the ingenuity and experimental gameplay remains with each new release. I have to say, I was a bit disappointed by Flashbang’s departure from crazy with Paper Moon, so hopefully we’ll get some more creativity/weirdness from Flashbang in the future. Possibly more prehistoric creatures as protagonists? I won’t complain.