August Party – iamagamer Post-Mortems

This month’s party will feature post-mortems from some the games made during July’s “iamagamer” game jam! Jammers were tasked with creating games that had a female protagonist, and the results are all fascinating interpretations of the theme.

Space Leap by Z Goddard

Space Leap is an exploration survival game. You play Theresa an explorer stuck in a pocket dimension searching for supplies to survive until you can find a way back to normal space. I would like to build it into a rogue-like-like.

Z Goddard is a small fish in the sea of game dev. He likes making physics-based virtual sensation games, biking, writing bad poetry, dancing, and curry. His favorite games are PixelJunk Shooter, Uniracers, FTL, and Left 4 Dead 2.

Escape from Texas! by Dan Crocker and Miles Flanagan

“Escape from Texas!” is a surrealist vision of Texas’ future, extrapolated from its current attacks on privacy rights to suggest that being a woman in Texas who speaks her mind will one day be illegal. One woman, Jane Bowie, protests at the passage of the law and has no choice but to put Texas in her rearview. But, they won’t let her go without a fight (or, at least, a chase).

The game was created by a team of five at iamagamer, including tonight’s presenters, Dan Crocker and Miles Flanagan. Dan has been a lawyer for seven years and is now in management and technology consulting, but this was his first game jam. Miles is a musician focused on writing game music, a Berklee College of Music student and tutor, and an all around talented audio guy.

Trapper’s Trials by Ethan Heilman, Colin Sandel, and Carolyn VanEseltine

Trapper’s Trials is a top-down action-adventure game about a woman convicted to death in the arena.  To avoid her fate, she sneaks out of her cell into the dangerous catacombs below, armed only with her wits and the dubious materials around her.

Ethan Heilman is a Cryptography/Security Graduate Student at BU. In his past life he was a software engineer working in start-ups and research labs. He writes strategic games in his free time and neglects his blog. Colin Sandel is a QA Tester at Harmonix Music Systems and a self-published SFF novelist outside of the office. He has collaborated with Carolyn on Interactive Fiction projects and hopes to do more game design in the future. Carolyn VanEseltine is an independent game developer and interactive fiction author with several award-winning games to her name.  Among other projects, she’s currently working on a procedurally generated IF/roguelike cross written from scratch in C.

FWD: Totally BS!!: Convention Disruption by Chester Kwan

FWD: Totally BS!!: Convention Disruption is an interactive fiction, inspired by games such as Tex Murphy. The game’s story is inspired by a blog post about “Fake Geek Girl” stickers showing up at a convention, and it served as a basis for a “whodunit?” storyline.

Chester Kwan makes animated comics and small games as a hobby, but hopes to make them into something bigger.

Joan’s Adventure of Magic by Ryan Casey, Rachel Dziezynski, Ryan Kahn, Nina Klymenko, and Alex TC

Joan of Arc was believed to have visions from God during her lifetime. You will seek God’s guidance as you make choices in preparation for the Battle of Orléans. However, God’s signs may not always be direct and clear (divine knowledge being the way it is) as to what choice may be most beneficial to you and your troops. Think creatively and sort out exactly what God may be pointing you towards.

Ryan Casey is a game designer, writer, and producer who has just graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He works as the President & Public Face of High Class Kitsch, an indie studio based in Worcester, MA. Ryan Kahn is a programmer working at Kinvey where he builds awesome user experience on node.js. In his spare time he dabbles in making games using the latest and greatest web technologies. Being from Wisconsin, most of his games are cheesy. Nina Klymenko is a freelancing 2D artist-Illustrator focused on game development. She works with a variety of graphical styles and employs many different techniques to accomplish the task at hand. Her technical background enables effective development for games which not only look great but also work well and lead to increased revenue. A recent graduate from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Alex TC likes to make things. Apparently this includes video games. Alex works as a programmer for High Class Kitsch, an indie studio based in Worcester, MA. He may occasionally refer to himself as an “experience engineer”, scare quotes included.