What's up imaginary fan(s)!
So last summer UltraPitchfork and I participated in a game development competition (fun fact : the guy who created the event contacted me via Newgrounds). It was your regular "stay awake for a stupidly long time and try to make a game" competition. So we had 2 days (roughly 32 hours of work) to make a game prototype on a given subject.

The first things that hit us when we arrived were the following :
1. Everyone seemed to have a better setup than us (btw, Sam's laptop died the night before)
2. We were the youngest of the bunch! (and probably the least likely to win, to the eyes of the other competitors!)

After the teams had all set up their gear and started socializing (read : wasting time on the internet), we headed to a conference room across the street for a short talk on game design and for the revealing of the theme : antithesis (the opposition of 2 ideas). Sam and I spent a while thinking, discussing and doodling before we got to work.

Except for the extremely loud music and sound from the booths nearby, the competition was great. Actually I felt like a human slug - there was a bunch of chicks bringing food to our tables, so we didn't even have to get up, lol. Anyway, I'll fast forward 2 days because this part isn't very interesting.

After the competition we had a few hours to walk around and check out other people's projects. There were some great games, and some that were unfortunately unfinished that I would have loved to play. One thing I haven't mentionned yet is that a lot of the competitors were teams of 3-4 folks from the local game studios (ubisoft, frima, sarbacan, beenox). Since there were such big names around, people didn't really pay attention to the 2 scrawny kids doing their little thing. I guess they didn't expect to put out much of a fight. Well, they were surprised.

When people saw our product, the look on their faces was priceless. Now I'm no body language expert, but I guess it would roughly translate to "Oh my shit, did those guys really make that?". The game itself wasn't amazing, but I think what impressed people (and judges) was the amount of polish, content and completeness we achieved in such a short time. Also, our interpretation of the theme was pretty good.

That night, most of the competitors went to a bar nearby for the winners announcement. After an ear-gouging musical performance by 2 kids from someplace, the organizer stepped up to annouce the winners. There were 3 categories : student, independent and professional, one of which would also win the grand prize.

He first announced the winning student team, and then professional, and then we started getting pretty excited. When he said "Bar Jazz et Poésie" (our team name, yeyeah), we exploded with joy (figuratively speaking). So, the 2 unknown, unemployed, sleep deprived guys took the prize home, over a bunch of full time programmers / designers. Huh!

We won't submit the game just yet because although it's fun and we're proud of it, it's not quite complete enough for the standards of the angry internet kids who will be playing it, so we're probably going to start the whole thing over and submit the new game with a link to the 2-day project.

The whole thing was a great experience and we're probably going to participate again this year. Our resolutions for the next competition are :
1. Sit further away from the Guitar Hero booth
2. Have a few engines ready for use before the competition
3. Have a sound and music library ready before the competition
4. Come up with a stupider team name

In other news, I'm working on a bunch of games at the moment. I'm hoping to release them all this summer, with the beginning of "phase 2" on my website. We're going to try new things and I hope it turns out fine... I really love making games and if I could make a living off it, I'd love it even more!

Here's a pic from an uncoming, unnamed project (art by UltraPittsburgh) :