Tag: GOTY

A photo from November's WordPlay Festival

Looking Back and Looking Forward

by Chris Tihor, posted in blah blah blah

2017 was an interesting year. Not interesting in the “may you live in interesting times” way entirely, although there were certainly a share of challenges during the year. One challenge that was a welcome one was the challenge of becoming familiar with my new home in Toronto and getting to know a city I haven’t had much contact with for twenty years. But instead of focusing on the challenges that 2017 had brought, I thought I’d focus on some of the highlights:

And all of that is just stuff I can talk about. There are also a few things brewing up behind the scenes that I hope to be able to talk more about soon. Unfortunately, this means that the “looking forward” part of this post is going to be a bit light in detail at the moment. Rest assured that more news will be forthcoming as 2018 progresses. You can definitely expect to see more news about Mandatory Upgrade related projects, and possibly something around a certain web-comic that remains near and dear to my heart. Oops! I may have said too much, ignore that. Regardless, 2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year for Ironic Iconic Studios and I hope you’ll be joining me for the ride.

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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.