Kotaku: student games

Entries Announced for IGF '09

Maggie Greene — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:00:00 MST

A couple of Kotakuites have written to underline what I'd already noticed — the lists of the 2009 Independent Games Festival entrants are finally up.

This year was apparently a record year, with entries up across the board for a total of 226 entries in the main competition (up 30% from last year) and 145 for the student showcase (up 15%). On the entires, there was this to say for both parts of the competition:

Examples of the entries span already announced indie titles, including Jason Rohrer's Between, alternate reality RPG Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, visually lush point and click adventure Machinarium, and art-game I Wish I Were The Moon, through previously little-discussed titles such as Pieces Interactive's "first walk'em up" Walkie Tonky, new Nifflas-designed title Night Game, and Lexaloffle's "ecological action game" Conflux.

... a great diversity of student-made games with original concepts are showcased, with examples including GumBeat, in which you "...blow bubble gum and gather enough supporters to your cause to topple the anti-gum government", High Moon, a "abstract post-apocalyptic zombie western robot romance in 3 acts", and It's MimeTime, in which "you are a female mime artist in Paris, who must earn as much as possible, by miming your way through an invisible maze."

Both the '09 main competition entries and the student showcase entrants are available for viewing; I'll be looking forward to the final results.

2009 IGF Announces Record Entries For Main, Student Competitions [GameSetWatch]

Graduate School and Gaming: The Making of Winterbottom

Maggie Greene — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:40:00 MDT

While at E3, I wandered down to check out the Indiecade offerings (I meant to post my impressions earlier, but they'll be up tomorrow — better late than never). I'd posted earlier about the postmortem of The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom and was happy to get some hands-on time with the game, plus the chance to chat with Matt Korba (lead designer) and Paul Bellezza (producer) about the game and life inside USC's Interactive Media program.

This is a nice look at the making of Winterbottom and designing in an academic setting; I enjoyed the parts of the game I got to take a look at, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here. The USC program is really pretty exciting, in that their students and graduates are actually going on to do something.

[via IndieGames]

Nintendo Releasing Student DS Games (Hurry, Limited Time Only)

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 02:30:00 MST

Last year, Nintendo worked with some Japanese students to come up with a few experimental DS games. Now, in a pleasantly surprising move, they'll be releasing these games, free of charge, over Japan's DS download stations. Four games will be available, with each available for two weeks. The first game will be up on March 13, with the last on April 24. There's an eerie, temporal feel about this whole thing: because the games can't be saved, once Nintendo yank them from the service, they're gone. Forever.
Nintendo Japan [via Siliconera]

Drunk Driving The Video Game

Mike Fahey — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:20:59 MDT

Ever since Atari released Night Driver, gamers have been looking forward to what we expected was the natural progression of the title. Unfortunately we never got Drunk Driver, but a team of fine arts students at the University of Calgary have come up with a reasonable facsimile. "The Booze Cruise", the end result of over ten months of work from the students, is a PC game that simulates driving with a blood alcohol percentage three times the legal limit. With blurry vision, you have to drive home in 90 seconds without killing anyone. I hope there's more to it than just blurred vision, or it could very well be called "Driving Home From The Eye Doctor After Being Dilated Without Wearing Those Silly Plastic Sunglasses Cruise", which is entirely too long a title for a student project. Police plan to use the game as a teaching tool, while students plan to giggle while they crash into people, places, and things.

Students develop drunk driving video game [Canada.com]
Image courtesy of CanWest News Service