May Meeting Recap & Game Project Info

We had a pretty awesome May meeting. Thanks to all who participated. And OMG thanks Lucy for remembering to take photos! Since some could not come by and want the vitals I’ll break it down.

Presentation

If you didn’t know, we are working together to make a game and this was the kickoff. First we had a quick presentation to talk about what we were going to do. You can download the slide deck here. After chatting about some ideas, we voted on the best. Lastly we collectively brainstormed what the game would be. We left the meeting with homework: Explore the game concept and come back with something to present at the next meeting.

The Pitches

Before I get into the game concept we had some great ideas. Jon’s kid (who is too cute) pitched a game about a pelican diving to get fish. Another was a kind of 2-way breakout called ‘Breakdown’. Another was where you play a hipster and ride your bike around smoking cigarettes and being hipster. We had a game which was a top-down pirate ship game. And another where you played a first-person shooter in an office swivel chair.

Ultimately we ended up with….a tie! Office Chair Shooter and Pirate Ship Game were tied for first, barely edging out Breakdown. And so we went ahead and mixed our ideas together to create: Office Pirates!

The Game: Office Pirates!

But…what *is* Office Pirates? It sounds like a cool concept but what is it concretely? What is the objective? A lot of different ideas were thrown out: Maybe you play a skyscraper on a pirate ship (a la Terry Gilliam). Maybe you have a small ship in a flooded office and go slow…like a boat. Maybe you are attempting to save/convert other office pirates to your cause, and create a chain of pirates in swivel chairs (maybe like Colossatron or Anomaly).

Pre-Production

So that’s where we left it. There are a lot of games we can potentially make. We want to explore a lot of different kinds of ideas. Now we are looking for *you* to contribute your ideas for the next meeting. How, you may ask? Here are some ideas:

• Make a game prototype! (Brandon’s already got one!) Use whatever tech you want. Make it 2d/3d. Make it fast and don’t worry too much. If its squares shooting squares at squares….that’s a prototype!
• Draw something! Got some ideas for some characters?
• Design something! Draw some levels. Write out some concepts.
• Write something!
• Mix and Match! Design & Write. Prototype & Draw. Whatever floats your office-boat.

It doesn’t have to be polished. In fact its probably better that its not! Please use your own work tho.

How do I post my work?

If you are participating please email me at chris@enemyhideout.com and I will invite you to our wiki/trello/slack setup. All of this is invite-only at the moment. We will be presenting the awesomeness at our June meeting. Once you are invited you can post your work on the internal wiki, and join the chat with other game makers.

In addition to these internal places you are more than welcome to put things up publicly at the meetup forums.

That’s it for now. I hope to see some of you at our monthly Coffee Talk, and we’ll present this month’s game ideas on June 28th!

http://www.meetup.com/Tucson-Game-Dev/events/231365998/

http://www.meetup.com/Tucson-Game-Dev/events/231566832/?read=1&_af=event&_af_eid=231566832&https=off