BIC Fest 2018

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In mid-September, I went to South Korea for the BIC Festival (Busan Indie Connect, not to confuse with Casual Connect) with a little detour in Seoul. The first thing that happened in Busan was the “Make Play Jam”, a game jam before the conferences & exhibition. There, I had the change to meet Zak (programmer at 11-bits studio) and Wolf (part of Poppy Works). Each of us got separated into different teams as we were mostly the only programmers. The novelty for me was to make a game with people that barely spoke english, which was challenging in a way. We were communicating through Slack to exchange informations. I was also sick to death, so I was happy to buy laxative.

 

We finally did a small platformer game called Happy Dog:

After the jam, there was one day (13.11) for conferences, with high quality talks from Chris Hecker, Tyrone Rodriguez (Nicalis), Casey Muratori, Nick Suttner and others. Even though the day was full, it seemed pretty short of a lineup compared to events like Reboot Develop, Respawn (before Gamescom) or other smaller conferences events (not like GDC).

Then the day after was Business Day (14.11), it was the occasion for press to test the game before the consumer’s days and to pitch to publishers (mostly sponsors of the event). I got the occasion to pitch the early prototype of Soup Raiders to Nicalis and Devolver Digital to get feedback (there was also Humble Bundle and Epic Games).

Of course, the two days following where the exhibition open to the public. The festival organization did a little game where developers gave stickers to players when they came to their booth, motivating them to test as much game as possible. Because it is a indie game only festival, there was no too much noise (compare to Taipei Game Show for example).

BIC Fest would be what it is without talking the Beach parties. every evening, after dinner, was probably the best networking opportunity with beer and alcohol. This is the place I met some developers from the Kyoto indie game scene and other.

In the end, the BIC Fest is a nice stop before TGS, without the crowd and noise, but with the high quality developers.

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Polymanga & PolyLAN

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The Easter week-end was a long one. It started on Friday morning at 8:00am at Montreux to get our entrance and setup the booth at Polymanga. For a second time after Japan Impact, we had the chance to exhibit our game on the Nintendo of Switzerland booth. And it was PACKED pretty quickly after the opening, to the point we, the developers, had to stand at about 5 meters from our stand to check it. There were just too much noise and people. But from kids to parents, everybody was enjoying the game.

On Saturday, I took the day to make a tournament at PolyLAN where 19 players competed with outsiders and veterans of the game alike. The level was higher than last year, with some known players getting eliminated during the Quarter Finals. You can check all the matchs in the link below:

On Sunday and Monday, we finished Polymanga. We had the chance to have the developers from Retimed next to our booth and we could discuss and eat together. We meet some players at the booth and overall, the experience was positive. Unfortunately, I got the disease of the year the week after Polymanga.

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Orbital Game Jam

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Between Sat. March 17th to Sun. March 18th, Alexis and I went to the Orbital Game Jam, a small student game jam at the EPFL. Unlike most game jams, it only lasted 24 hours, so we needed to be quick and simple with our game. The themes were:

  • Et si ?
  • Plus loin que la nuit et le jour

We took the second one and turned it as travelling and finally train. We went for a second German empire setting with those lovely German soliders with spikes on top of them. We decide for a twist in term of mechanic by not having the player shoot but bounce.

So we did Orbital Express where you play as  Agent Herrington and you have to stop Docteur Heinrich Grüter’s train to save London. You have dog steam machinery trying to kill you. Your only weapon is your typical English gentleman stick that you use to bounce the projectile back. You can play it here: https://teamkwakwa.itch.io/orbital-express

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