Posts tagged with “Cogs”

The 2010 IGF Finalists have been announced! Sadly, Slam Bolt Scrappers was not among the finalists, but there’s always next year (when we’ll be further along with development, and with any luck will have finished the game). There is good news though! Boston had a strong showing, and three of the finalists are made by locals!

Club Rochiro made AAAAAAAAAAA, the awesome base jumping game in which you get to flip off protesters, kiss buildings, and listen to Ichiro’s sweet, soothing voice while you meditate. Marc Ten Bosch made Miegakure, a mind blowing 4-D (yes, 4-D) puzzle platformer in which you navigate a Zen Garden and try to keep your brain from exploding. It’s a lot of fun! Finally, Rob Jagnow made Cogs, a fun sliding puzzle game with an awesome steampunk style. Yeah, Rob lives in San Francisco and made the game out there, but screw that, he’s an MIT guy and was making games in Boston until recently, I’m claiming this one for our side.

Congrats to all the finalists, these games are all really spectacular! We’ll give next years contestants more of a run for their money

Welcome back to part 2 of the series on GDC 2009. While the last post covered some of the more interesting sessions from the Game Developer’s Conference., today’s post will focus on some of the more interesting people I had the pleasure of meeting. While you may not recognize all of their names (at least not yet), these are the guys and girls and who are doing new and exciting things in games. Perhaps unsurprisingly they are all independent developers and academics who are truly trailblazing new areas in gaming.

Alex Austin, Cryptic Sea
There are a large number of us who try very hard to make serious games that teach users real life skills in a fun way. Then there’s Alex, who just does it on a regular basis. He’s the brilliant mind behind Bridge Building Game (which eventually turned into Bridge Construction Set), a fantastically fun game in which you have to build suspension, draw, and railroad bridges over rivers and pits using real world physics. Alex isn’t stopping there though, and is currently hard at work on a new game… set on the moon. The premise is pretty simple, you’re an astronaut in a lunar lander, and you’re trying to take off from the moon and rendevous with the lunar orbiter so you can return to Earth. The catch? Limited fuel, a moving target, and a nasty case of gravity. It’s not enough to simply aim at the orbiter and go, you need to estimate where it will be, shoot ahead of it, and hope that you can meet up. The game sounds like a lot of fun, and will be available on Steam (hopefully soon!). The best part is that the game is just going to be part of a six pack of small, bite sized offerings, though I personally hope they all involve space, rockets, or bridges.

Continue reading →