Posts tagged with “indies”

Our good friends over at Owlchemy Labs have just come out with their new game, Snuggle Truck, for the iPhone and iPad. And it’s awesome! In the game you control the driver of a flatbed pickup filled with a bunch of cute stuffed animals, and speed up and slow down the truck by tilting the iDevice. As you zip around your truck bounces on the uneven ground and the cute animals can pop out. If all the animals fall out you lose! Every now and then a baby animal flies out and you have to catch it, doing so gets you a rocket boost.

The game is super fun and feels like a mobile version of one of our favorite games, Trials HD. It’s silly, fun, frequently hard, and the kind of game that you’ll play over and over and share with your friends. And we’re not just saying that because Alex and Yilmaz are two of the most awesome Boston Indie developers (but they are, did we mention that?).

There’s also been a fair amount of silly, ginned up controversy over the game. Originally titled Smuggle Truck, you were supposed to help illegal immigrants cross the border to get into the US. The game was a parody based in part off their friends’ trouble immigrating here. However it got picked up a few months back by Fox News and a few others who didn’t understand that the game was satire and took it at face value, complaining that the game was corrupting teh childrens or something. The upshot of all this was that the original game got rejected by Apple despite being high quality and fun, and Owlchemy had to resubmit with the new title. It’s kind of ridiculous, but I suppose that any press is good press and at least they got a ton of coverage out of this.

Go check out the game now if you haven’t yet! They’ve also got a PC/Mac version if you don’t have a fancy iWhatever. Congrats Owlchemy!

The good people at Boston Post Mortem will be reprising the PAX East panel, “Indies Will Shoot You in the Knees,” for the meeting coming up this Wednesday, July 14th starting 7PM at the Skellig in Waltham. Eitan, our Fire Chief, will be moderating the panel, so it’s sure to be an interesting night!

Here’s an excerpt from the BPM site:
“Everyone is talking about Indie games ”” titles like World of Goo, Braid, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! ”” A Reckless Disregard for Gravity are making press and making money. But they’re fighting against games with $200 million dollar budgets and 100+ person dev teams. How do Indies compete? Three Boston-based Indie developers will check their water-guns at the door and tell you why and how Indie games are kicking more ass, taking more names, and chewing more bubblegum than their AAA rivals. You will hear from the Ichiro Lambe (IGF Finalist Dejobaan Games, Aaaaa!), Scott Macmillan (Macguffin Games, All Heroes Die) and ex-Bungie AI wizard Damián Isla, founder of the new indie Moonshot Games. The panel will be moderated by Eitan Glinert, founder of Fire Hose Games.”

Eitan’s going to be giving two great talks next week – first, at Boston Indies on Monday, second as an IGDA Webinar on Wednesday.

Boston Indies – Monday, January 25 @ 7pm – The Asgard, Cambridge, MA

Join Eitan at Boston Indies on Monday as he shows off Slam Bolt Scrappers and discusses the development of the game thus far. It’ll be a pretty informal event, and it’s at a bar, so you get to drink some beer and hang out with the rest of Boston Indies. Find directions to the Asgard right here.

IGDA Webinar – Wednesday, January 27 @ 12pm – Dial In

After you’ve heard all about Slam Bolt Scrappers on Monday evening, tune in Wednesday afternoon to hear Eitan presenting an IGDA webinar on Rapid, Iterative Prototyping. Eitan will be explaining why it’s a great way to get started on a game if you’re missing other essential elements like an artist, funding, etc. Plus he’ll be showing off some of the builds we’ve developed using this method.

It’s going to be a busy week of talks, hope to see you at the events!