Tag: Game dev

Chris’ Interview with Adventure Games Podcast and also Game Dev Necromancy!

Featured by Chris Tihor, posted in Appearances, Game Releases, Interviews

I recently had the great pleasure of being interviewed by Seoirse Dunbar for Adventure Games Podcast. We had a long and fun chat where we discussed my history as a game maker, my work with Talespinners, and my work with the WordPlay Festival where I am proud to continue to serve as Festival Director. You can listen to the episode here.

Besides promoting the WordPlay Festival (coming up this November 9th and 10th), one of my goals in the interview was to talk about my own experiences making games in a way that would be accessible to people new to the game development world and may even inspire them to try making their own games.

That goal led me to talk about one of the first games I’d ever worked on as a game designer: Curse of the Mummy’s Brain!! As mentioned in the interview, I’d made Mummy’s Brain in 2011 during OrcaJam, an annual game jam that is run by IGDA Victoria. It was my first game jam and it opened my eyes to the amazing things that could be done by a small team of creative, motivated individuals over a short period of time.

After talking about it on the podcast, it seemed like a shame to me that listeners wouldn’t be able to experience the game for themselves, so I did some digging around, found the source code, made a bunch of updates to make it run on modern hardware, and posted it on my itch.io page for all to see. It’s a bit clunky, and there are definitely a few things that aren’t working as they’re meant to, but once again it’s back from the dead! I hope you’ll enjoy playing Curse of the Mummy’s Brain!! as much as I enjoyed making it.

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Come see me at EGLX!

by Chris Tihor, posted in Announcements, Appearances

 

I’m delighted to say that I’ll be attending the Enthusiast Gaming Live Expo this weekend (March 9-11) as a guest! I’ll be speaking as a part of the Developing on a Dime panel running from 1-3 pm on Saturday, March 10th in Panel Room 1. Join me to learn tools and tactics for developing games on a minimal or non-existent budget, a subject about which I am intimately familiar. Also, watch this space as I’ll be posting a number of resources on my website afterwards to help you with your micro-budget game development needs. See you at EGLX!

X Marks the Spot Wins First Place in Game of the Year Competition

by Chris Tihor, posted in Announcements, Awards

 

In a great start to the new year, Ironic Iconic Studios’ first game, “Mandatory Upgrade – X Marks the Spot” has taken top honours at the 2nd annual TorontoGameDevs.com Game of the Year competition. Hundreds of people voted for their favourite game produced in Toronto and Southern Ontario and our game was fortunate enough to be voted #1 overall. This puts Mandatory Upgrade in the esteemed company of terrific games from other game devs such as DrinkBox Studios, Benjamin Rivers, and Ubisoft Toronto.

A game like this doesn’t just appear fully formed from the ether of the designer’s mind and so I’d like to take a moment to give a shout-out to the folks who helped make this happen. Firstly, my partners at One More Story Games who provided the platform to create and release great story-based games, StoryStylus. They also provided plenty of encouragement and technical support and were flexible enough to accommodate me when I started to use their game engine in strange and unexpected ways. I’d like to send props to Julia Harrison and Alistair Murphy, the artists who took my pages of descriptive text and reference material and whipped them up into a cohesive world with their gorgeous art. Also mad props to Steven G. Saunders (aka Mr Zoth and the Werespiders) who created the perfect musical accompaniment to the world of Mandatory Upgrade; a soundtrack that is evocative, moody, and fresh, all at the same time. Finally, I’d like to do a big shout-out to Pati Tozer, my editor and chief of QA who helped keep all of my mistakes in the dev room and out of the public eye, a service for which I am ever grateful.

One of the best things about contests like this is how easy it makes it to discover new games that you may not have heard of. I’ve definitely added more games to my ever-growing game queue as a result of this. And I hope that if you haven’t yet tried Mandatory Upgrade: X Marks the Spot then you may be inspired to do so now. You can play it via the One More Story Games Website.