February. The runt of the monthly litter. The little month that could. The month at the kiddie table. The diminutives are many, but the result is quite singular: there’s Big Trouble in Little February. Cats and kittens, there’s a meetup afoot.
WHEN
Wednesday, February 2nd, 19h30
WHERE
Brasserie Artisanale l’Amère à Boire, 2049 rue Saint-Denis, 3rd floor
WHO
You. Two of your friends. Then they invite two of their friends. Our lawyers assure us that it’s not a pyramid scheme if we’re not making any money.
WHAT
An evening in several parts!
First, Aaron Saloman (link and link) shall regale us with tales of woe (whoa!) and triumph from his work composing music for television and video games. In particular, if you enjoyed the music in the award-winning Critter Crunch (PSN), from Toronto’s Capy Games, you have this man to thank and shower with praise. We don’t often hear from the musical side of game development, so this certainly has our bonnets all aflutter.
Parte the Seconde: You haven’t forgotten about the Global Game Jam this weekend, right? You (and possibly your friends) are going to employ alchemy and geomancy to bring fabulous games into being, right? Well, we want to play them. Granted, only two days separate the Jam and our meetup, but since when do we care about polish and completeness? Drop us a line in the comments down below if you’re feeling confident enough to showcase your game in our open-mic session—priority given to Global Game Jam participants!
And as per usual, the threat of baked goods looms ever-glowering in our hearts and minds.
Those of you present at last week’s January Social know that we’d like to showcase more of the awesome game design scene here in Montreal—be it events, game art, game demos, or anything else game-related, digital or analog.
Those at the meetup should therefore also be familiar with our first feature! We saw several awesome games during our open-mic demo session, more about which we’ll be posting in the coming weeks. Among them was a game that’s generating a bit of buzz at the moment: Richard Flanagan’s FRACT.
The consensus (perhaps somewhat encouraged by Flanagan) pegs the game as a cross between the relaxed, exploratory gameplay of Myst and the visual style of Disney’s TRON: players move around a surreal landscape, observing and experimenting with the interconnectedness of the environment’s strange machinery. Something of a design & interface geek, Flanagan has already imbued the world with a strong and tangible visual and aural language—do play this one with a good set of headphones, as the game suggests.
Despite still being in beta, FRACT is already turning heads—so much so that it was recently selected to be part of this year’s IGF Student Showcase. Which is kind of an amazing thing. We asked Flanagan to talk a bit about the game and its critical reception and so, with our thanks and our heartiest of congratulations for its well-deserved acclaim, let’s learn about FRACT, in the designer’s own words…
(more…)
There’s something in the air these days, and we’re confident within reasonable tolerances that it’s not the less than 1.0% trace atmospheric elements to which we’ve grown accustomed. It’s a breath of fresh air, a brand new year bringing with it new resolutions and VSync issues, many of which can be addressed by downloading the most up-to-date drivers.
With these solemn thoughts in our hearts and minds and retinas, let us reflect a while on all the latest news that’s fit to column width.
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The Global Game Jam is, in the words of so many novelty T-shirts, kind of a big deal. Hundreds of teams and participants around the world engage in a 48-hour groundswell of game design, all in the spirit of having fun and getting some mad XP acquiring real-world start-to-finish design experience.
It’s taking place from January 28-30 this year, and activities are being planned at l’École de technologie supérieure (ETS), where Conjure (the local game design club) is providing space for jammers to get together and work en masse. Entrance is free, though participants have to supply their own laptops and equipment, and the venue doesn’t provide full 48-hour access.
EDIT: Carl Leduc-Benoit of Conjure notes in the comments that ETS will in fact provide 48-hour access.
Give us a shout down below if you’ll be attending, or if you’re planning on other GGJ events!
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The Mount Royal Game Society has a logo!
You may have noticed Mergsey (our unofficial name for him) (we also arbitrarily decided he was a male) around the Internet: on Facebook and on Twitter, for instance, as well as on our Prince of Arcade publicity. His sleek lines, bold simplicity, and party-girl attitude were all conceptualised and designed from the ground up by the very talented Mr. Phil Fish, of the Polytron Corporation. So a tip o’ the crown and a hearty thank-you to Phil for his (as usual) clever and compelling work.
Expect to see more of Mergsey as we roll out more announcements and events in the future!
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And last but certainly not least, don’t forget to sign up for, contribute to, and otherwise generally acknowledge the Mount Royal Game Society Google Group! It’s a great place to arrange co-working sessions, to offer your technical expertise, to look for beta testers or design collaborators—in short, to connect with other Game Society members and Start Making Amazing Things. Those letters were capitalised arbitrarily, but almost form “SMART” as an acronym. The auspices are overwhelmingly ambiguous!
Now let’s get out there and rock 2011 like it’s 1999 and Y2K is still a thing.
