Utah Indie Games Night - July 2014


What an awesome Indie night we had this past Thursday. There were over 50 people in attendance, which made it rather cozy down in Ninjabee's basement. Thanks once again for them hosting the event.

Michael Purser, Ninjabee's PR guy, started off the evening with a presentation on doing marketing at conventions, like PAX and Comic Con. He spoke directly from his experience so the information was very relevant and useful. Also timely as a number of indies are doing a combined booth thing (mega-booth) at SLC Comic Con in September. He mentioned a lot of considerations you need to take into account above an beyond the cost of the booth, such as shipping of physical items (which can be expensive), and paying for convention power and internet. They really gouge you on internet, so it's best if you can get by without it. He also said you want to extend your reach outside of the booth as much as you can. Doing things like getting large displays or large signs up high. You want people to see your booth from far away. Also you should try to always give them something, like a card with your business website and maybe a key-code for your game or demo. Also raffle tickets to give away items can be helpful as well. He also spoke a lot about being mindful about your booth location and layout within the booth as well, so you can make it inviting.

After that we opened the floor to demos, and man the room filled up quickly with tables and computers. As usual I wasn't able to see all the demos, but here's the one's I was able to see or got a glimpse of.

Curtis was showing his now completed Match 3 game that teaches some Japanese letters. The art is very clean and readable and I liked his mechanic of showing time running out via a water level running out.

Peter was showing his three player card game that's based on the world of Siphon Spirit. He's hoping to have it ready to show at Comic Con. It's coming along since I've seen it last.

Austin showed his two player hacker battle game. It has some great pixel art. The basic premise is you have to infect your opponents computers and keep your computers healthy. If you can successfully infect all of his machines before he can clean the viruses you sent, then you win.

Darius has added a bunch of new art and a nice UI, since I saw his space battle game last. He's also 
added a helpful tutorial level. He's trying have something to demo by

This was made in Unity by three brothers, Marc, Mike, & Nate. It's a 4 player arena battle game that's played with controllers on the same screen. Simple game-play to just frag your opponents with different weapons and rack up points. You re-spawn soon after you die so the play continues. You also have to watch out for falling rocks as well. This one looked like a lot of fun.

This game looks absolutely stunning! The visuals are top notch. It's a skill based marble game where you tilt the level to move the ball from start to finish. It's starts out easy but the difficulty ramps up soon to more and more challenging levels. Some seem very masochistic. It has an addictive quality to it that make you want to keep on trying.

This was a game originally written for the Global Games Jam in January. They are going to be changing the art around but keeping the premise that the world changes based on your actions. They are going to add some dynamic music to reflect that.

Mike just released the last in the D.R.O.D. series. I didn't get to play this one, but it looks great, like all of the games in the series. I noticed it had lots of great voice overs, and Mike mentioned that there is tons of story in this one since it is the last game. He wanted to bring the story to a final conclusion.

Lycan
I caught a glimpse of this game. They had four players on four laptops networked together. It looked like the objective was to turn humans to werewolves (if a werewolf) or turn werewolves back to humans (if a human). I'm assuming the game ends when everyone has been converted to one team.

I noticed some people playing a board game called Hell's Peak. Didn't get to see it much, but according to the site, it's a single player game where the object is to dethrone the devil.

It was a great evening with a great presentation, some great games, and some great conversations. It always gets me pumped to finish my own projects.

Viva la Indie!


EDIT: Jay's writeup can be found here.

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