Hey everyone, Steven here! This week I’m here to talk about a busy couple of weeks I’ve had showcasing To-Tum at ‘Abertay Game Dev. Society does Freshers’ (www.facebook.com/groups/AbertayGDS) at Abertay Student Centre and ‘GamesAreForEveryone Volume 2’ (www.facebook.com/TheHitPointUK) (www.twitter.com/TheHitPointUK) at The Mash House in Edinburgh as well as taking part in the ‘Charged Hearts Game Jam’ at The Hannah Maclure Centre (www.facebook.com/hannah.centre).
The ‘Abertay Game Dev. Society does Freshers’ event was a night of drinks and games from GDS members past and present and a chance to let new students see what the society is all about. The event was small and quiet but it was great to get a chance to talk to players and get feedback. It was also a nice opportunity to see students who were interested in joining the society, one which does a lot of work to help students meet others and work on projects in small teams - something that I believe is very integral to learning to work in games. The night also allowed me to catch up with a lot of other Dundee based developers and Abertay students.
The Hit Point’s ‘GamesAreForEveryone Volume 2’ was an incredible showcase of Indie games from across Scotland! From hectic local multiplayer titles still in development right the way through to games which share a space with interactive art, the night was a celebration of all things video games and it was an incredible honour to be part of the event!
Throughout the night we had players coming to try To-Tum, and the feedback was great. I’ve said this several times before, but seeing players get hold of the game means a lot to me and having players asking about release, enquiring about the team and development are all very encouraging things. I've had lots of people saying how much they enjoyed playing To-Tum, something else which is incredibly exciting and inspirational.
Finally I would like to talk about taking part in ‘The Charged Hearts Game Jam’. Game jams have always been great fun for me, getting to work on small concepts for a short period of time with friends. I was especially excited for this one as the jam was based on ‘Charged Hearts’, an interactive art piece and web-based game that “examined the relationships of physics, emotion and new communications technologies of the time” by artists Catherine Richards and Martin Snelgrove (Catherinerichards.ca).
The team; 3D artist Stephen Chapman (Twitter.com), UI artist Caitlin Goodale (Twitter.com), and myself as the sole programmer decided to develop a game around this concept of connectivity, specifically focusing on connectivity between player through both a digital medium and through physical interaction.
Over the two days we developed a game called Syncopation - a multilayer networked rhythm game with heart! The game was inspired by Catherine and Martin’s ‘Charged Hearts’ web game and Johann Sebastian’s ‘Joust’. The concept was for players to take a physical “Heart Card” with an accompanying morse code. Players must then tap the heart on screen to the rhythm of the morse code, which keeps the heart beating. Failing to tap the code in rhythm causes your heart to go out of sync, and start deteriorating. The pace of the tapping becomes faster and faster over time thus increasing the game's difficulty. Alongside keeping your own heart alive, the player is also tasked with interacting with other players all of whom will also be tapping their own unique morse code pattern. If a player can tap their morse code pattern at the same pace as another player, the two will become “in-sync” and both players will be able to receive a health boost.
Unfortunately as game jams go, there were aspects of the game that I was unable to implement including the aspect of networking. Although we briefly had some connectivity, this was dropped to focus on the core game development instead. I was still happy with the outcome that we had - warts and all, and had great fun over the weekend!
Thank you for checking out this blog!
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