Sirius Rising at the “Meet and Blog“ Event in Hessen, Germany I intended long ago to make this little retrospect, but better late than never … On 16th of September I was part of the 1st “Meet and Blog“ event, located at the wonderful Flipper-und Arcademuseum Seligenstadt in Hessen, Germany. Hosts of this nice event were André (Videospielgeschichten.de) and Senad (FAMS/retro.wtf). Besides other presenters of interesting retro-related projects, I presented the latest version of Sirius Rising. Since this event was mainly addressed to the retro community, I decided to create a accompanying presentation which focuses on the progress over the years and reveals some of the inspiration sources from the 80s and 90s. The presentation incl. speech was about 30 minutes long, filled with a lot of animations and videos – done with one of my most disliked programs: “PowerPoint“. Because I was out of practice to present a “product“ in front of people, showing mostly art stuff was a good decision – a picture is worth a thousand words, eh!? ;) Anyway, 30 minutes was long enough to show some insights into game development in general, the design decisions, the team building and of course the roots of our game – Uridium, Xevious, River Raid (just to name a few). And short enough to keep focused.
After the “PowerPoint“ presentation, people had the opportunity to test the game on a small game station. Especially for this event, Andrew created a new test version in time, with reworked controls and a lot of other improvements. I decided to present two versions: 1.) the “Aberdeen“ version, which does not include the reverse controls and special weapons, but all existing levels. 2.) the “new“ version, with pimped controls and weapons, but just two levels instead of three.
To cut things short: the new improvements got positive feedback and I think that we are on the right way.
Since this event was not meant to be an indie developer/gaming event per se, the feedback on the game play wasn’t as extensive as in Aberdeen. However, it was perfect to get direct feedback from veteran players, who know “Uridium“ from their childhood. And it felt like our game has passed the first test. :) That being said, I had too much fun with all the arcades in the museum during that day … and played a lot of original cabinets in the exhibition space, like Vanguard, Tron Discs and last but not least Daytona USA. I have met a lot of great people there and can’t wait to meet them (hopefully) next year again! Thanks to André & Mugg for the photos! More information about the organisers and the location: http://www.videospielgeschichten.de/ (DE) http://for-amusement-only.de/ (DE) http://www.flipperundarcade.de/ (DE) If you are interested in 8-Bit hardware, give this site a shot: http://8-bit.info/ (EN) If you are nearby Hannover, make sure to visit the guys of Pixelpokal: http://www.pixelpokal.de/ (DE)