[warpdoor]

Quur (Arthur Vilain, Thibaud Troalen, Héloïse Lozano, Typhaine Uro, Lucie Viatgé, Caroline Bitterly, Dante Medina)

“In a world sustained by a magical liquid, called the Color, you embody an ethereal being capable of manipulating it.” - Author’s description

Download on itch.io (Windows)

[ty-u]

Update 2016

So! I kinda enjoyed writing about all the things that happened last year, so I’m gonna do this again for this year. Ready go.

I spent last summer working as an intern for Onirigami! I had to work remotely and I was the only artist in the team during that time, which felt a bit weird. But I did enjoy working on an actual game, and at some point I realized I was actually having a lot of fun working on this? That felt good and very different from what school assignments made me used to ❤️

I took part in the Pet Jam, and made Tamagesit, my first game completely by myself in 3D in Unity wooo ✧・ﾟ: * I had been learning C# a few weeks before the jam, and making the game proved to be more challenging than I thought. Thankfully I had a bit of help and support, and even if it’s not perfect (or finished) it’s kind of the starting point for the rest of the things I’ve been doing this year. Because I realized I could actually make games. Amazing.

I participated in Headstart! I spent a week listening to talks and attending workshops from various indie devs, as well as meeting new young ones. I learned a lot about how I should talk more about what I do, and gathered a lot of new ideas and friends :> You can read a full summary of this week here.

I also made a card game during the jam called Gossips at the Court! I still don’t know if it works properly, though, I only tested it twice.

I didn’t want to lose all the knowledge I had gained from Tamagesit so before the end of summer I made a very small thing called Your Darkest Thoughts. It’s meant as some sort of secret diary in which you can type anything you want, and it will fade away on screen, leaving no trace behind. It’s more of a “cathartic tool” than a game, but people kinda liked it I think?

For ZooMachines, Pol, Hélo and I decided we wanted to work on some VR Google Carboard thingy, in which your only objective is to lie down and relax ~ So we made VR Lounge, a game that you can only play while lying either on your back or stomach. It features 3 different scenes, one by Hélo and two by me, and Pol made a little booklet to go with it.

Klondike was Screenshake’s special guest this year! We had a whole room to exhibit our games, and we also built a Zine Machine. The whole thing went quite well, the space we made was super chill and it wasn’t as stressful as when we were showcasing things last year. Which kinda makes me want to do more stuff like that, building a space for people not just to enjoy the games we made, but also to take some time to sit down, talk a bit with other people, in a very quiet atmosphere. Some people of Headstart were also here, it was great to see them again!

I even did a talk at Screenshake! Bram asked me 3 or 4 days before if I wanted to, and without thinking too much I said yes. I spent all my time panicking and reworking on 2 or 3 different talks, and then finally decided that, fuck it, I should talk about what was driving me at that moment: fear. Being on stage for 15 min in front of a bunch of people who have paid to be here to listen to you is already super stressful, but opening up about your weaknesses is even worse. But I still chose to do it, because it’s easier to do so in front of strangers who don’t know you and are relatively far away from you (since you’re on stage), rather than face to face with a friend. I don’t know if what I said made sense, at that time I didn’t really know what I was talking about either. I don’t regret doing this talk, because it also helped me a lot, but now I secretely hope that it will never be published online :x

In the same vein as Your Darkest Thoughts, I spent a week working on Geheim right before GDC, as a warmup. I was a bit anxious because I remembered that last year I hadn’t been that good at meeting new people and introducing myself, so I gathered random facts about myself and put them in a game. Yup that’s it. I still have to fix a few bugs though, I published it like 5 min before I took the car that drove me to the airport that flew me to San Francisco haha

GDC this year was great! I was way more confident about meeting new people, and the fact that I was now part of Klondike really helped to introduce our respective friends to each other. I wasn’t showcasing anything, so I could completely focus on talks and people. Klondike “officially” met Sokpop and that was fun. I also met Alan Hazelden and Benjamin Davis, and we’ll be working together this summer ~ 

 The only negative thing I have to say is that parties are super tiring, and it’s a shame that there isn’t anything for people who just want to meet and talk :I I kept struggling to find some place relatively “quiet” where I could actually hear people without being bombarded by loud music. It’s kinda sad to spend half of your time at That Party standing outside with other people who don’t really know what they’re doing here either. Which really comforts me in this idea that there should be more spaces like the one we did at Screenshake, for people who are not into dancing, drinking and loud music, and need calmness and comfort to be at their best.

Then came A.MAZE! We were supposed to showcase VR Lounge there but one we arrived we were basically told to find a spot and take care of the whole thing by ourselves :I With help from Thorsten and Simon we managed to set up a space somewhere, but it was kinda hidden and people mostly assumed it was a space to sit, and not a space to try a game. We didn’t make a big deal out of it though, because we still got free tickets for it, and it wasn’t the best game we had to show. So we just let it be and enjoyed our time there! Like GDC, it felt way less stressful than last year, and this time I didn’t feel like I had to attend every talk and workshop there was. The fact that there was a pool and a lot of places to sit down and chill made it even better. And it just generally felt good to go back to Germany, drink some Apfelschorle and eat some Currywurst.

And finally, after 8 months of hard work, I graduated from my school with our game Quur! I worked mostly on shaders, FX and particles, but also a bit on chara design, UI, and some other stuff. It’s been a long, strenuous year, but we still made it to the end, and our game looks really good. The few gifs we posted on twitter had way more success than I’d have imagined, I don’t know if the game itself will have as much recognition. But it was really encouraging!

Now all that’s left to get my degree is to work for my last internship! What school made me mostly realize is that I don’t want at all to work in a huge team, in a huge studio, on a huge game. I don’t want to make the most realistic looking stones. I don’t want to do the same thing day after day. And I don’t want to be told what I should do, without my opinion or my creative input being taken into account. So, instead of looking for “traditional” game companies, I decided I wanted to work for studios specialized in games for kids! And Toca Boca and their games have both this sense of fun and creative freedom I was in need of. I actually applied last year too, but didn’t get any luck. This time though, after a few skype calls and tests, I passed! I’ll be spending 3 months in Stockholm starting September, and I’ll maybe even stay there longer after that? I’m super excited! 

But before that, I have 2 months to make lots of games and at my own pace! I’ll already be pretty busy with what we’re going to work on with Alan and Ben, but I finally have some time to work on the many things I’ve planned. And now that I aaaalmost know how to code kinda well, it’ll be a bit easier ~ I hope I can at least release More, and then maybe something else. Hopefully my internship won’t drain all my energy like this year did, and I’ll be able to work in my free time at a more regular pace! 

Being free from school also means that it’s my first actual step in 𝒂𝒅𝒖𝒍𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒐𝒅 ™ and that I’ll have to deal with a whole bunch of new things. Like, taxes. Or losing the privileges I had both as a student and through my family. Or working so that I can have a roof over my head. 

...

Hopefully good things will come from that too :>

What’s really scary is that I have no idea where I’ll be in december yet, and when you think about it it’s really soon, compared to the 5-year plan I just finished. I don’t see myself living all my life in Sweden, but I don’t see myself chasing after small contracts all over the world either. I’ll probably (ʰᵒᵖᵉᶠᵘᶫᶫʸ) have a better idea of all this at the end of november, but it still is frustrating, not being able to do anything about that.

Anyway, that’s it for this year! I’ll probably write a few other articles in the next months ~

❤️

[polclarissou]

𝓥𝓡 𝓛𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒆 can now be downloaded on itch.io if you have an android phone and a google cardboard ❀

it was originally made for Zoomachines 2015 with Typhaine and Hélo ❧

[ty-u]

Your Darkest Thoughts, Geheim, More: why I’m making these

In February we got invited by The House of Indie to showcase some Klondike games in our very own dedicated room for the Screenshake expo. It was an overall great experience, and since we wanted to have a very chill setting, it wasn’t too stressful on us either, and we could all just sit back and relax.

In addition to that, I got asked to do a 15 min talk on any subject I wanted, and after struggling for a bit I decided to go all out and talk about fear, how I’m scared of a lot of things and how it affects the way I live, and how I’m using this fear to make games about it. I also “officially” announced More, a game project I’ve been working on for a while, even though I hadn’t really talked about it yet.

This blog post is meant to go a bit further into detail of what I said during this talk, and the games I’ve been working on recently.

Before I start, I have to say that all the things I’m going to talk about are things that I’m super self-conscious about, and that it’s not easy for me to talk about them. I’m doing this because I don’t like being stuck in this state, and because I hope it’ll help me trigger a change in how I live and think.

So, first things first, I am not having the best moment in my life right now. As I said, I’m getting more and more self conscious about various things, I’m under a lot of stress due to my studies and the fact that I’m graduating really soon and have no idea what awaits me in the future, aaand I’m pretty bad at being single. There’s also a lot of good things happening that I’m very happy to experience, and I know that I have a lot of privileges (like being able to come to GDC or A.MAZE) and that a lot of people would love to live the life I live, but that doesn’t compare to the weight of all the worries and uneasiness that cross my mind every day.

I already experienced something like this back in middle school, except it was way worse because I had nobody to talk to and nothing really good happening to compensate for it. But what mostly caused this was the fact that I had been keeping all of this to myself for a very long time, and that I thought that I could take it. Except I couldn’t. All these thoughts occupied more and more room in my mind and heart until I collapsed at some point, and it was not easy to try to get back on my feet.

I don’t want to go through something like this ever again. So now I try to relieve myself all of these negative feelings through one way or another: ranting, writing them down to put words on them, drawing when I need to give a shape to what I’m feeling, and sometimes making games.

This is exactly what Your Darkest Thoughts is about, and what it’s meant for. When I started working on it I was having a pretty bad time and felt like I couldn’t talk about it to anybody. I also find that keeping a diary is super stressful, because it actually leaves a trace of your very private thoughts and once it’s found, anybody can read about yourself. A few weeks before I played Albert Lai’s Only At Night, which sums up really well what it’s like to wander in your thoughts when you can’t sleep, and the description suggested that you could also use it as a journal. Which I started to do, and found rather helpful. So, to keep all this horrible thinking away, my solution was to make this... thing? Basically it allows you to type in anything that you want and slowly watch it fade away on your screen. This way you can put words on your thoughts, clear them out of your mind, and be sure that nobody will never know about it. You just empty yourself from all these things weakening your mood, until you’ve calmed down.

Geheim, which I made very quickly just before GDC, is kind of the opposite, since it is about sharing personal facts with other people. Even though I got way better at this, I still tend to keep a lot of things to myself, and prefer to leave space for others to talk. And I feel that because of that, people don’t know a lot about me, which I think kind of affects my relationship with other people. I don’t really know how to make it happen, because I can hardly find an opportunity to talk a bit more about myself. Since I was about to fly for GDC, and was about to meet a lot of new people, I thought again about this, and wondered what would be interesting to learn about me. So I made this other thing, in which I share 13 facts about who I am and what I lived. What’s great is that I feel comfortable with sharing that sort of information, because I’m the one who puts it here for others to read. It doesn’t feel like they’re invading my privacy.

Finally, there’s More. It’s a game I’ve had in mind and been working on since last June, but I barely talked about it or showed anything before my talk at Screenshake. Mostly because it’s a depiction of how I’ve been feeling lately, and it’s suuuuper personal, so I’m very uncomfortable when I try to talk about it. To sum it up, you have to feed apples to the mouth in front of you. Thing is, each time you feed it, it gets angrier and hungrier, and asks for more and more and more, until there’s no apple left on the table. At that point, the only thing you can do is to feed it your own hand. This is meant to show how I see the way I interact with other people, friends, and especially lovers, and how I highly depend on them, to the point that I’d almost call it an addiction. And how it scares the shit out of me, as I see no way of how I could get out of this, and that in the end the only thing that I get in return is self doubt and guiltiness.

As you might now notice, these 3 games aren’t necessarily made for other people to enjoy. I’m not really making these games for other people’s sympathy, but rather for myself, to learn, understand and accept more of myself, and to try to keep these bad thoughts away from me. It’s like self-therapy, except I have no idea if it’s doing me any good, or if I’m just trapping myself in my own distress.

It is, of course, also a way of reaching out, because I’m very bad at talking about these things, and that I see games as a medium we can use to help people connect, express and understand things and ideas that you couldn’t convey as efficiently with any other medium. And it’s super scary, giving up all your weaknesses like that to other people, for them to deal with as they please. But really, I’m not asking for sympathy or support, I just want you to know that no, I’m not OK right now, and that I need to let go of all these things I have in my head, so that I can feel better. You just do what you want with them.

As I said in my talk, working like that isn’t very healthy either, since you have to keep on dwelling on your thoughts during the whole time you’re working on your game, before you can finally set them free. This shouldn’t be your main fuel for your creativity and inspiration. Which is why I don’t want to put too many future games in this “series”, and work on other games that are more enjoyable and colorful.

I still have another project after More, though, that I’ve been thinking of for maybe 2 years, even though I’ve barely started working on it. It should be even more personal and introspective, since it really is about something that happened to me and turned me into the person I am now. But it’s a very sensitive topic to me so I’m not ready to talk about it for now :(

I’ll try to finish More before the end of this year, even though it’s not really easy between all the projects/events I’m part of right now, and perfectionism/procrastination always strikes when you least expect it. So I’m not doing a lot of progress. But hopefully soon!

Anyway, this is all I had to say about these games. Hopefully they’ll help me get better and help me connect better with other people, who maybe share the same issues, or are just curious about what I’m going through. I’m still not too confident about talking about myself so publicly, but it seems like it’s the best way I can trigger this change I was talking about. Maybe it’ll help me talk about the other things I’m so self-conscious about. *crosses fingers*

[ty-u]

a work test I did for Toca Boca in 2016 I had to create a character from scratch, inspired by some concept arts and in-game screenshots, which I later learned were from Toca Dance

[polclarissou]

here’s some pics from our Klondike voidspace & procgen zinemachine from Screenshake – see more photos here~

[ty-u]

Headstart 2015: a super long summary by Tyu

(in which she wonders if perhaps she should have written a book and not a blog post)

I just came back from Headstart, a one week-long event organized by The House of Indie with workshops and talks from great European (and one Canadian living in the US) developers in Antwerp! I learned about it a few weeks before it started, and after hesitating for a while, I decided that since my internship had eaten away most of what is probably my last summer vacation (sob) I should just get the hell out of my flat and go somewhere cool with cool people to learn cool stuff.

OKAY HERE WE GO

I'm first gonna talk about the places we went and the overall event and then explain what we did on each day ~

Every morning we would eat breakfast at DE Studio, and then attend a talk of 2h on various topics (Game Design, Aesthetics, Engineering, Management/Planning, Law, PR/Marketing and so on), then have lunch, and then 2 workshops of 2h each on the same topics, with a 30 min break in the middle.

DE Studio is a really nice place, there was free coffee, tea, juice and water, some couches and tables on the ground floor, with also a Winnitron with Nidhogg on it (most of people's break time was spent on it as you can imagine), and Bram (one of the co-founders of The House of Indie) on one of the last days just brought a Johann Sebastian Joust arcade (not sure of the word) out of nowhere and we played in the dark in some fancy circular room with pillars, mirrors and a fireplace which really fit the game.

The talks took place in another super fancy room with a piano and super old super comfy armchairs and velvet sofas, which for some people made it difficult to not fall asleep during the talk (my trick was to stay in the front row since the whole thing was filmed and recorded, plus the armchairs here were the most comfy. in the pic it’s actually the two blue ones on the right though).

Workshops took place in a third room with just tables and chairs, which looked more like a small classroom. It echoed a lot so it was a bit difficult for me to hear what people were saying when the floor was creaking or when someone was talking at the same time, so I also tried to stay in the front rows to stay focused.

Meals were taken on the ground floor, supplied by Bonnie + Fro, with yogurts, porridge, chocolate biscuit, crackers and strange pastries that I had no idea what they were made of (but tasted really good) in the morning, and fresh veggies, quinoa/rice/pasta salads and bread for lunch. Some people complained that they were still hungry after eating, but I didn't really mind since I hadn't eaten food that healthy for a while (and that I could need a diet oops). And food is a big criteria when I attend an event I paid for, and when it's good and healthy and vegetarian/vegan/allergy/whatever friendly it's even better! (for instance the food at Zoo Machines is AMAZING and I start to miss it as soon as the jam ends and I can't wait to eat it again aaah)

Unfortunately we had to find our own food for dinner and the cheapest and closest options were of course McDonald's, pizza and wok noodles so this kind of balanced our diet I guess haha

Evening talks took place in Kavka, which I guess works a bit like Neue Heimat in Berlin? Basically you can rent rooms for concerts and dance classes and talks. Everything went well the first days and then at some point we had to deal with people who'd put their music way too loud in the other room and we couldn't hear anything people were saying (we were 20 people gathered around a table with a guy speaking as loudly as he could, and we still had trouble understanding what he was telling us).

And we slept at Pulcinella, a hostel with very spacious rooms (and restrooms. and bathrooms. I know it's for disabled people but still, wow) and a nice lobby with a bar (and Bionade! I missed Bionade), and there's even small quotes you can pick from a jar at the reception ( I wanted to pick one daily and use it at some sort of fortune but sometimes the quotes were just too abstract for that :I but it was fun to do). Only complains I heard were about the service (some of the room they gave to the guys was still full of clutter and clothes and shoes as if the people who were there never left??? and the staff was a bit grumpy), and the fact that you could only access wifi in the lobby and not in your bedroom kind of annoyed me a bit. But then we wouldn't have all joined together and got drinks and played games (like Progress, and Metamorphabet, and Meant to Bee, and Space Team, and Fugl) til midnight, so it's okay!

Okay now what did we do this week?

We started with a Game Design talk by Adriaan de Jongh in which I heard all the things I wanted and needed to hear about game design, which basically is the complete opposite of what I've been taught and what I rejected, and which in my case works really really well (discard game design documents because nobody's gonna read them, prefer a game design vision to small game design ideas you try to forcefully put together, stop using game knowledge without giving it a thought first, associate the input/gesture of the player to the event happening in the game, etc). Talk was sometimes interrupted with a small stretching time, which we then applied to every time we had a break, because somehow it made us feel really good!

Then the 1st workshop, also lead by Adriaan, was about trying to come up with ideas really quickly on how to make a platform character jump (which made us realize how many ideas we could find in 2 min, especially when going into "fuck it" mode) , on ways to make Nuclear Throne freemium (yay marketing ideas!), and on why our friends should play one of our favorite games (yay elevator pitch!). We then had to write as many game "visions" as we had, and then pick one and find game ideas for it. So here I was, sitting with 9 game visions (one I'm currently working on, another one that's in the works, two that I had already thought of before, and 5 new ones!) and 4 ideas for one of them (which really makes me want to try to make them now argh).

Second one was by Emily Short, and it was about Interactive Narrative. I'm not that good with storytelling, even though I enjoy writing a lot (as you might have noticed). So having to do some assignments felt good! First exercise was about picking two cards, one about a dilemma and the other one having a constraint on it, and writing three or more choices the character had to progress further in the story. Mine was about a graduate student that is so lazy and slow to write his dissertation that his girlfriend has set him an ultimatum: 1000 words today, or break up. And my constraint was that the options could only describe actions that would take at least a week to perform, soooo that was an interesting challenge. Second exercise was about thinking of the exploration, challenge and choices the player had to face based on a plot idea written by the person next to us. I got "Every place you visit you can't ever go back to" and imagined an exploration game in which you have to build a house/shelter somewhere, and visit many places, but since you can't see them again, you have to decide at some point whether you want to stop here and build your house or search further, even though there's no guarantee you'll find something better. And you have to take into account if the place you found is safe and comfortable and if it's not going to collapse at any moment and so on.

And last talk of the day was by Phoenix Perry on diversity in videogames. It was an advanced version of her Amaze talk, so it felt kind of familiar to me, but it was maybe the only person to talk about diversity and feminism and opening up to people out of the game culture, which I think are topics that we as "young indie wannabes" need to consider and acknowledge, especially since topics like GamerGate are really really not well understood or known in Europe from what I've seen. I especially loved the "Broculture is bullshit" part hahaha

Also it opened my eyes on how I should consider teaching people about games full time (or part time) after I graduate, since this is something I already have experience in, as I teach kids how to use Game Maker on summer camps, and it's something I miss already. As long as it puts bread on the table and that I can work on weird games next to it, I'd definitely do that!

Morning talk was "Aesthetics: Nothing else matters" by Tale of Tales, which basically was the thing on the program that made me say "Yes. I want this. I need this. I'm going", so I was expecting a lot from it, and they did not disappoint! They tried to make us feel their vision of beauty through an extract from the Salve Regina by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi and a passage from Amélie Nothomb's La Métaphysique des tubes (which I haven't read yet), and personally I felt really touched by the music (mostly because I'm all in for classical music and choirs and opera. sadly the version in the link is not the same as the one we listened to, I couldn’t find it :< ). They also gave us a few thoughts on how the conventions around the way to control a character was all about giving him power and control over the virtual world, and how we should also consider to try the opposite. And how games should be seen as cultural objects and not just consumable products, and how making a game is making a philosophical and political statement, even when we chose not to make one.

Here again, I think this was an important talk that we as attendees needed to hear, so that we could open ourselves to a new way of thinking our games (even though it's perhaps not something that will help us earn money), and even though Auriea and Michael badmouthed Steam and commercial games a bit (which made me laugh, but after the talk I talked a bit with some people who had found it a little harsh, which I can understand), I think everybody still got something out of this talk.

Obviously I can't really be too objective on this matter (and I'm not trying to either u v u), as discovering The Path and Tale of Tales right before I entered my school was probably the starting point of me deciding to not stay on the path of righteousness (haha get it) that would lead me to the game industry, and instead try to make games for the sake of Art and to express things I couldn't express in another way. The Graveyard is still one of my favorite games (though I wish we could actually visit the whole cemetery grandma speed and look at the names on the graves).

But more on that later!

Then we had a Sound Design workshop with Martin Kvale! I like to make my own sounds in game jams (I'm Chewpi's and half of Ferdinand's voice), and learning cool tricks is always great. I was already impressed by Joonas Turner's workshop in Amaze, but with Martin we actually had to try and make our own sounds by ourselves using super unexpected objects (for instance with my team we recreated a murder scene only with sounds using a plastic bag, a razor, a box with a locket, some jingling balls and condoms). Also dildos can make super useful sounds when paired with another object, apparently. And slicing a pineapple makes the same sound as cutting into flesh. I love sound design.

Second workshop was actually more of a talk by one of Cresco's lawyers, and as you might have guessed it was about Law. This is a subject I'm veeeery bad at, and I have a lot of trouble filtering (and sometimes just even understanding) the informations we are given in my law classes. This talk was more focused on how to start your company in an efficient way without any surprise or risk, so it was a bit easier to understand, but since it was in english the jargon was even less understandable and I had to google words all the time hahaha. Fortunately Johnny (who helped Bram on the organisation) was sometimes interrupting the talk and speaking loudly about things that were easier to understand and remember, like "Incubators only accept teams of 3+ people, with an artist, a programmer, and someone who focuses on business" or "Going indie alone is close to suicide" which would help us wake up and write notes immediately. Anyway, now I'm pretty sure that if one day I want to start a company, I won't do it by myself and I'll probably ask/hire someone to do all the paper work for me and explain it to me in a language/jargon I speak haha

Evening talk was by a Microsoft evangelist who showed us some features of Cortana. At first attendees were "haha Cortana who even uses it, there's Siri and tons of other softwares for that" but at the end they were all pretty convinced that it was better than Siri, and Cortana became the biggest private joke of the week. Good job there, Microsoft guy! What I regret is that he spent some time selling us the features with marketing marketing and marketing, and we went over the implementation in Unity in maybe 10-15 min, which was actually what I was looking for :< It looks really easy to use though, I'll have to try it some time.

First talk was by Martin Jonasson and was about source controlling and backing the shit out of everything you need to work as soon and often as you can. "Let's play a game: if I threw your computer against the wall, how much would you lose?" was probably the scariest thing I heard this week. I've already lost a few times important work files (RIP my Endless Crossing scene ;-;) on flash drives and hard drives, so I tend to keep everything on my laptop now and nowhere else. Which basically means I don't have any back up (and as I write these words I'm thinking "why am I writing this super long article and not backing everything I have on this laptop right now?" but I have weird priorities). Also I tried to use Git and didn't manage to do anything with it, so Martin showing us how it worked was really useful! As he had finished the talk a bit early he also talked a bit on working with other people, and how we should keep in mind that the more we are, the more expensive it is to pay us, and that we shouldn't be afraid to kick people out if they're not vital to the project or untrustworthy. And that we should also separate personal and professional issues. Some mentors even added that they would never risk to work with their friends because they don't want to destroy their friendship, to which I don't really agree. I think it's more about finding someone compatible with your workflow and ideas and ways to communicate, your coworking SOULMATE, basically. But of course finding someone like that is a whole other problem.

Erin Robinson made us work on what she calls Flowchart Game Design, which is about finding nouns that are, say, the most vital elements of your game (Pacman, Fruit, Coin, Ghost for instance), and connecting them all together with verbs (Eat, Chase, Grow...). And the more your nouns are interconnected and no one is left out, the better your game is, basically (also if the verbs fit well together, then it's a good sign). I might have had a similar exercise in school, not really sure, but trying to apply that on projects I'm working on made me realize what worked well and what didn't work at all and what I should cut out of my projects. Which I wouldn't have realized if I had just  for instance playtested it with someone I guess? But yeah, useful thing to do when you feel like something's not right with your game~

Second workshop was by Tatiana Vilela, and with her we built our very own custom controllers! Tatiana and I are regulars at Zoo Machines, the french alternative controller game jam, but as strange as it might seem I had never tried to use joysticks, arcade buttons and circuitboards (I only knew how to use Makey Makey. Oh and how to destroy keyboards I guess). So first thing I learned is that these things are super cheap, second thing I learned is that it's fucking easy to set up. I guess I know what I'm gonna do with all the cardboard I've been piling up in my restroom for a year now. During the workshop people built a Street Fighter Controller in which 4 players have to control the same character, a super weird Makey Makey controller for Ms. Pacman where 4 players each represent a direction and have to touch a 5th person on their skin to make the character move in this direction (works a bit on the same principles as Eggregor8, the Pacman mod I had seen at Eniarof), and with a bunch of people we had this crazy idea to make a unicorn mask with a button on the forehead you have to press, but the unicorn runs away and fights and you have to chase it to press the button and play... Canabalt! Since Tatiana had brought a barrel, Adriaan and Martin absolutely wanted to make a custom controller with it and made an ostrich simulator game in 30 min! When lions come at you, you have to burry your head in the ground (barrel) until they go away, which makes it really fun to watch someone play.

Evening talk was Ed Valiente explaining to us how to release our games on the Nintendo eShop. He aligned tons of arguments that made it really interesting to consider publishing our games on this platform, but what I liked the most is that it really sounded accessible to everyone, and that it was a friendly and helpful place. Which I wouldn't expect from such a big company (but I don't know anything about reaching to big companies like Microsoft and Sony, so who am I to judge :ɪ )

 Morning talk was PR and Marketing by Johan Toresson, which you could basically summarize as "stop everything you're doing and start talking about your game RIGHT NOW". He also showed us an extract from the Yes Men documentary and made us realize that if you wanted your product/game/whatever to be remembered, the best thing you could do was to put a common thing in an unorthodox context (I think that the meaning behind the Marilyn Manson pseudonym is probably the best way to remember this piece of advice). I also learned that there's a facebook algorithm that works in a way that whenever you post content on your page it only appears to a certain number of people and that they have to like your content or share it for other people to see, if I understood well? Anyway, lots of cool marketing/PR/Advertising advice.

Martin J. showed us the small prototype he used in his famous Juice it or Lose it talk and then we looked and dissected frame by frame together several effects in games such as in Hotline Miami or Thomas was alone. I like to look at super cool FX I find in games and try to understand how they work, but whenever I launch Unity I keep looking back and forth between the gif/video of what I'm trying to recreate and my blank scene, because I have no idea where to start and how to do it from a technical point of view :ɪ I still need to learn a few things I guess... Martin told me to look into Steve Swink's book on gamefeel, though, which I will!

(man, you can see that the more I write about the week the less text I put in each day haha)

Aaand last workshop of the day was again by Johan, which made us write about 3 game ideas we had in 6 minutes, then talk about the 3 of them in 30 seconds (10 seconds each), and then I think answer questions about one of these games in 15 minutes (which basically helped us form some sort of elevator ship), and then again 3 new game ideas in 6 min and pitch them in 30 sec. Which felt really good because during the week I used some old game ideas and perfected them or found some new ones that I really really want to do now (but ugh it's so hard to have so many ideas and only time to work on one :< ). Before Bram would announce us the theme for the game jam, Johan finished the workshop with a small talk (or should I say manifesto?) about creativity and how the current average education system didn't help to train this skill at all (I shook my head a lot while he was talking), and how creativity was resistance, and destruction, and a revolution, and I got all fired up for the theme reveal! (۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶

Then Bram announced that the theme of the jam was "Start it", with a bunch of modifiers we could add, like only use one color, or no text, or a custom controller, or put the KBC tower in the game, or a non default playable character, etc etc.

While we were eating falafels at Chickpea (really good place), I got the idea to make a game about starting a revolution, and how the only way for your people to walk further would be to physically (i.e with a custom controller, for instance a Makey Makey with foil around your elbow) flex your arm in this universal (I guess?) common gesture people do when chanting and protesting in the streets. Then I thought of adding another input on the sides/hips of the players so that they had to hug/form a human wall to go through obstacles with the power of love ✧*｡

I guess this is the best way I can explain the gesture I'm trying to describe. (it’s from Asterix and Obelix Mission Cleopatra, a french classic 👌 )

After that everybody pitched their game ideas, which were all really good, some more doable and interesting than others, and then Bram told us to somehow group ourselves in teams of 5 people max, which I found a bit weird (and told him immediately of course)? As we were 14 attendees, this basically meant that there would only be 3 teams, which isn't much, and with so many game ideas (like 20 I'd say?) it would be hard to make everybody agree on something, and this kiiiind ooooof happened. Nothing serious, really, but I bet that if we had all voted on the games we wanted to see and selected the 3 or 4  most wanted and then formed teams around these games (like we do in Zoo Machines), it'd have been less messy and stressful. 5 people per team was also too much in my opinion, because in the end we had teams of 4 people (one programmer, one artist, and 2 designers), 5 people (one designer, one coder and 3 artists) and 5 people (one designer/artist, and 4 programmers!!) which felt really unbalanced to me (though some teams work well with 3 artists or 4 programmers, but my point is that we could have had a 4th team had the max size of teams been smaller).

Sadly my revolution plans didn't start this evening, as people were more interested in other projects. Though I'm still a bit skeptical on some arguments I was given, like "I like your idea, but I don't really want to work on a game using a custom controller that I can't play at home afterwards", which in my opinion is the whole purpose of custom controllers? I mean if your controller doesn't put the player in some kind of performance or new form of play that he can't experience somewhere else, what's the point? :< But yeah, anyway, I gave up on my idea and joined another team, and I'll bring it with me to Zoo Machines because I feel some potential (and laughters. mostly laughters) in it. But the jam would only start on Friday night anyway, so more on that later!

 Morning talk was Henrike Lode sharing with us her experience on Machineers, and how the game and Lohika, the company she started with it, didn't work as she would have expected. She showed us from the very start of the project to the bankrupting of the company all the mistakes she had made, and we all listened silently and respectfully (and scribbled notes about every mistake she would point out). Auriea laughed at the end of the talk saying that it was weird that three (Lohika, ToT and Game Oven) of the mentors that are supposed to help us start well in the indie dev business had faced economical failures and had to quit. Adriaan said he didn't look at it as a failure, but just as something that wasn't working anymore. In any case, since we obviously learn more from our mistakes than from our achievements, I think it was also important that we witness how things can go super bad if you don't pay attention or don't make the right choices or plan in advance. This was even the mistake #4 in Henrike's talk: "Research only successful competitors".

For the first workshop of the day, Auriea and Michael took us out to visit Antwerp's cathedral. Auriea first started by talking a bit about the important parts of a church and showed us the stations of the cross, for instance. I come from a catholic background and education (I'm baptised, I made my first communion and uh declaration of faith, which is a french thing from what wikipedia is telling me?), and even though I don't believe anymore, I still know my way around churches and who's who and what this and that mean and so on, so I'm kind of in my element~ This wasn't the case for everybody, which I found interesting, because I had to understand how some place that felt familiar to me was a lot more oppressing and stressful and weird (maybe boring? I dunno) for people from other (non)religious backgrounds. I think I visited a synagogue before but I'm not even sure anymore? I should definitely try to visit a mosque though. And Hagia Sophia, I guess that would be really interesting.

Anyway, Auriea then told us that we were forbidden to take pictures of anything and that we had to just wander around the cathedral and look at things in details and feel the beauty and stories there was in every sculpture, painting, stained glass, architectural element, etc. The cathedral also hosts some paintings and tryptichs by Rubens, and I was especially impressed by this outer panel on the Descent of the Cross. The composition and lighting are 👌

So I walked in the church, and I'm not entirely sure why, but the more I looked at things the more I was submerged with all kinds of feels and before I knew it I was crying in front of a stained glass window, staring in awe at how the colors matched perfectly (especially the blue omg this blue was so pure, too pure for this world) . There were so many details, so many things going on in a single window, with so many colors, but it felt like everything had its own place and nothing felt like it was too much, for me. And then I continued walking and looking at other things and getting even more overwhelmed and I couldn't stop my tears anymore hahaha

...So that was a bit embarrassing.

Last time something like that happened to me was at the LaM museum in Villeneuve d'Ascq in which they host exhibitions on outsider, modern and contemporary art, and when I stood in front of some of my favorite artists' work (like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Aloïse Corbaz, Séraphine de Senlis, Augustin Lesage), my eyes got a bit wet. I think it's also because gothic architecture and sculpture (and stained glass) is something that I've hold dear to my heart for most of my life, even though I've completely split up with religion. And there were glories everywhere (the golden geometric light rays they put in sculptures), and I love how they create contrast with the super realistic sculpted bodies. It's just fucking splendid. Also they put some beautiful choirs on the speakers and as I said before I love choirs, so I think that if you want to make me cry, you have the perfect recipe right there.

After that we visited a second church, more baroque, and way more sober, and it left me a bit "meh". It was easier to focus on things because there were less things to look at, and the pipe organ looked great (I'd have probably started crying again if they had played it. probably), but yeah I like my churches gothic (or roman) with tons of architectural details (or mosaic and murals). I think it's also because when they said "baroque" I had imagined the super opulent interiors I had seen (with 10x more glories and shit going on everywhere and this is what I liiiike), but if I remember well my classes the Flemish side of Baroque was a lot more sober than the dramatic German/Italian/French/Spanish side?

ANYWAY, I need to visit a lot more churches.

And last workshop of the week was held by Tino van der Kraan, and was about Production and Planning, and after giving us some good advice on how to efficiently start a production (I'm now almost convinced by the use of vertical slices, yay!), he showed us how to use Google Sheets and the tools that come with it in an efficient way for our projects. And as someone who hisses at every Excel sheet the game designers give me because I find visually totally not efficient and boring and overcomplicated, learning the tools to make something super complicated easier to understand for other people made it somehow look like I could use this tool and like it? I'm more of a post it notes everywhere + big (sometimes virtual) whiteboard + to do lists person, but I've never worked as a team manager on a project longer than say a full month, and never had to worry about money, so that could come in handy!

After dinner we headed to the KBC Tower to start the jam, which I'm going to talk about right now!

Okay so the three games that were about to be made were about starting a new life by fighting your anxiety issues, starting a day by lifting the sun up in the sky, and starting a business by exchanging business cards the traditional japanese way, which was the one I was working on. Or was supposed to. Bear with me I have to talk about the place first.

 Ok so for the jam we were allowed to go on 3 floors and the ground floors of the building. One floor was a conference room in which we could put our sleeping bags and sleep, one floor was for lunch and break times, and had a TV with an Xbox and FREE coffee and tea and hot chocolates ( yaaaay!), and one floor was for working.

Johnny and Bram had put some mini NERF guns on this floor for us to use and I still don't know if it was the best or worst idea. It's a really fun way to have a break, but my summer camp activity leader senses were all sending me warnings about safety and potential disasters that could happen (someone getting a bullet in the eye, which happened, or a bullet hitting a cup of coffee that would then pour down on a computer, and a loooot of other things). Maybe we should have put the guns in the break room? But then eventually people would have brought them back with them in the work room. I dunno. Nothing serious happened anyway (which I still consider a miracle haha).

 One thing completely surreal was that in order to go in and out of the building we had to go through 2 security gates, and the shower area was between those two gates. Picture me in pajamas at 11PM with a towel on my head and my soap and shampoo under the arm, passing a security gate to get into a super famous bank building, and riding an elevator to the 13th floor, to work on videogames. A unique experience.

But of course, all this week had gone way too well for me and something was bound to happen. And it happened. My laptop's battery is practically dead, and the charger has a contact failure that has been more and more recurrent in the past weeks (to the point that you can't even call it a laptop anymore), and this is what made me the most hesitating to come, because I knew there would be a good chance that I'd bring a super heavy laptop with me, only to realize that it'd not charge or boot up for more than 5 minutes. Which is kind of a big deal when as an artist you need to work with 2D and 3D softwares. Aaaand on friday night, when trying to set up my workspace and charge my laptop, this is exactly what happened. I tried to bend the cable in all directions for an hour or two, tried to find a way to get as quickly as possible a new charger (and got the help of an attendee from Antwerp for that, but we had no luck), and in the end I decided that fuck it, the team could also work very well without me, and that I'd spend these 2 days trying to make something else by myself, while still giving some advice and tips to the other 2 artists of my team.

Sooooo I made a card game! I got an idea during Johan's workshop for a gossip card game, because my friends and I love to exchange gossips about everybody, and it's really fun to try to make someone understand that you have a gossip about or involving someone who's in the same room without them knowing. And that's basically what the game is about. I won't say more on the game here because this summary is already 10 pages long on Word (are you even still reading?), but I'll release a PDF version very soon that explains it all!

I've never worked on card games before. I made some art for a board game 4 years ago, but never designed any by myself. Which was challenging, because I still see myself as a game artist who tries to code and make games by herself, and loves to criticize other people's game design (oops), but I never thought of myself as a game designer per se. And suddenly I have to think of everything by myself! And it's weird, because somehow I make up some rules and I have no idea if they will work? Or if it's fun??? Anyway, I tried to make something and I made a first prototype and playtested the game on Saturday night with 4 other people, and got really good feedbacks! With very few information and a constraint, people somehow still find a way to get really creative and funny when it's about writing gossips about a fictional character. Which is exactly what I wanted! I made a second version in time for the deadline Sunday afternoon, but didn't have the time to playtest it or make the art for it, so for now I just have a cardboard box with clumsily cut paper on which I've handwritten some text and put some watercolor, and no idea if it works better than before. This is also why I have to make a PDF version.

Ultimately we ended the jam with 3 videogames and one card game, and everything went well and it felt super strange to me, because in jams I usually witness some teams (even the ones I'm in) give up or see their games slowly collapse, or panicking over a last minute bug that they can't fix and makes the game unplayable, but here the 3 prototypes were working well, and were good, and almost polished, and entertaining? That was really impressive.

The only thing I can complain about is that the sleeping floor and break floor were both cold. Like really cold. A few of us (me included) caught a cold after the first night, the second night I tried to find a warmer room on the break floor, which was barely lukewarm. Also the rooms on the break floor have motion detectors and switch the lights on whenever they detect something, so I actually had to move and hide behind 3 armchairs to not get detected by the motion sensor hahaha

What's less funny is that when I got home I got diagnosed with a pharyngitis :I But I'm also guilty, I forgot to bring a coat and some sweaters with me and only had one cardigan for the week. Which is completely stupid to forget when you know you're going to spend a week in Belgium. Good job me.

  The event was supposed to end with us watching GameLoading and eating pizza, but as my train was in a hour or so, Johnny rode me to the station in a super stylish car and I managed to catch my train on time! Thanks Johnny ◡‿◡

 Are you guys still here? I keep checking the word counter and I am so sorry wow. I'm gonna try to make this conclusion short.

Headstart is a one week event I definitely don't regret taking part into, if you're a student it's only 350€ (well more like 370 with the insurance and filing service), and you learn lots of things, and meet cool people!

I'm not sure who this kind of event would fit the most, for instance I think that some of the Klondike people wouldn't have needed something like that because they are already too advanced, even though most of us don't think of our games as a potential source of income yet. I also felt like some people hadn't enough "indie" experience to fully understand what was important in each talk, and just came here saying "hey, I want to make video games by myself, maybe?" (perhaps I haven't talked enough with everybody and I'm completely mistaken, but it felt that way). But it suited very well my needs, because I already have some experience in jams and making videogames with a small team or by myself, but I never wondered (or was too scared to haha) how I could live from that, or how to improve their design and my visions, or how to come up with new ideas, and how to talk about all that. Because I'm really bad at PR.

Also what made it great is that as we were 14 attendees, it was a lot easier to talk with each other and share games (and game ideas!) and experience, and have a great time all together, even though we all had our own vision of games and gamedev. I also greatly enjoyed talking with the mentors, and found it more easy to approach them in this event than it would have been at GDC or Amaze for instance. I think the main reason was that I tried to not know at all what they were known for (I mean, I knew their work, but wasn't associating their face with it) and this way I wasn't too starstruck. For instance, I was sitting next to Adriaan one night and he opened a Unity project and I was "wait, I've seen this on twitter! I wanted to play it! Did you make this???" and he said "Wow you know about this? Do you want to try it?" and we spend some time playing together Meant to Bee, which I guess I'd have never had the chance if I had known that he had been part of Game Oven (which is a studio I really admired and I love their games and I wanted to ask them for an internship before I'd learned they were closing D':), because I wouldn't have even tried talking to him hahaha. Same thing with Martin Jonasson, I had NO IDEA he was one of the guys behind the Juice it or Lose it talk.

 I knew Johan from his Amaze talk about pain which had put the whole audience in a really awkward mood and this gave me a weird first impression of him, but turns out he's a really sweet guy and somehow knows about Jacques Brel who's a really old Belgian french speaking singer???

The people I regret not talking to are mostly Auriea and Michael, and that is exactly because I was starstruck. A lot less than two years ago when I went to Notgames Fest, but still, these are people I respect and admire and I don't want to waste their time, and I just tried to keep a low profile. Emily and Erin also had this "very important. very busy." vibe and I didn't want to bother them too much. Maybe next time? :<

Oh and I forgot to say! At first I was a bit confused to see that there was no talk or workshop focusing on the production of visual assets (mostly because that’s what I do), but y’know, in the indie world anybody can make a game about anything, and we don’t necessarily have to have a 10 years degree in fine arts to make beautiful and powerful games, as long as we can put some feels in boxes, clay, felt, horrible MS paint drawings, whatever. And in this way I think that gamefeel and aesthetics are more important than just making your game look pretty according to some people’s standards.

Ooookay, this """summary""" is now finished.

To all the people who read til the end without skipping any part, congrats and a big thank you!

To all the people too lazy to read it all, I'm sorry, here's a real summary:

HEADSTART WAS GREAT. IF YOU WANT TO GO INDIE AND ALREADY HAVE A FEW GAMES BEHIND YOU BUT NO IDEA WHERE TO START, THAT'S WHERE YOU SHOULD GO. IT'S EVEN IN THE FUCKING NAME. MONEY NOT WASTED. COOL PEOPLE. GREAT ADVICE. JUST GO THERE.

 All pics were shamelessly stolen from the The House of Indie twitter account and Headstart website, and one’s from Johan’s facebook account.

Oh also! Just in case you want to argue about something: this is my very own and personal point of view on my very own experience of this week, based on my way to see the indie side of the videogame industry, and my own opinions and values, and blablabla. Some people might think differently, and that's fine with me, as long as it's fine with you to let me think that way u v u

[warpdoor]

//// SIGMA //// (Pol Clarissou, Typhaine Uro)

“a space exploration game that aims to make you experience space travel at a larger, more authentic scale.” - Author’s description

[polclarissou]

///http://tyu.itch.io/sigma///

[polclarissou]

Few screens from the first prototype of sigma, our contemplative idle-ish gamething u‿u The game will be released and playable soon I guess probably?

Most of these were taken by Typhaine btw.

[ty-u]

Little update

Hey there, I just wanted to make a post about what I’ve been up to this past year, since I’m so bad at keeping this tumblr updated :>

In November with a bunch of friends we made a game called Ferdinand Laboite, which then got invited to both Alt.Ctrl.GDC in San Francisco and A MAZE in Berlin! It was the first time I was presenting a game I worked on, and my first time attending a festival or a convention, and I had a great time meeting people at parties and all, and if I can find money a way to come back next year I definitely will!

Right afterwards I also took part in the 7dfps and made with Toki and Gautier a horror game called Guéridon. I’m not particularly proud of the few things I’ve done on it, but we got a nice article from an italian gaming site.

For the 31st Ludum Dare Pol and I made Chewpi.net,  in which you try to prevent small creatures from feeding on your computer. We got really good scores even though I’m not sure why?

With Lucie we made a game in a day called Strawberry Feed Forever in which you feed cute strawberries. We still have to make the sounds before we can post a prototype though!

I worked on a concept called Geist, based around the idea of an abandoned haunted house in the middle of the sea, in which you try to communicate with a spirit using a ouija board and tarot cards. Ugo joined me later on the project. Unfortunately it was meant to be developed in a year by a small team during our final study year, but it hasn’t been selected by the jury :/ Though I’d love to make it one day.

Lucie, Yadoob and I went a bit crazy on a school assignment and made a race map on UE4 based on magical girls and princesses *:・ﾟ✧  It looks awesome.

Héloïse and I joined Klondike, a french game dev collective! We can put kldk stickers everywhere now.

With Pol, Flex and Héloïse we’ve just finished working on SIGMA, a space exploration game we’re making for Hits Playtime

I finished last week my 4th year studying Game Art, during which I made a bunch of stuff I’m not especially proud of, so I’ll just post some of the best here and never ever put the rest on my portfolio. Feast your eyes on this.

Related to that, next year will be my final year as a student, and I’ll be working with Lucie and Héloïse (and other people) on a game called INK, for which I’ve already made a few FX and shader tests.

This summer, I’m going to work with Tourmaline on an Ipad game called Onirigami! I don’t know a lot about the project yet but I’m already excited!

Finally, I started working on a game project by myself, I don’t want to talk about it yet since I forgot how to code I don’t have a lot to show at the moment and it’s very personal stuff, but I hope I’ll have a first version to show at the end of the summer!

[polclarissou]

Here’s the video of the SUPER HYPER TALK we gave at A-Maze last week! In which I talk about embracing emptyness and idleness in games~

Check everyone else’s stuff too! -Armel -Lucie -Typhaine -Brice -Héloise -Flex -Delphine -Tom -Titouan

& our guest star George

[ty-u]

Hellooo I talk about games for kids and swear way too much

[ty-u]

I finally managed to upload this gif after two years omg

So yup something from 2 years ago, my first real try at low poly 3D and animation~ featuring the character that will then inspire my Endless Crossing project u v u

[kldk]

Wassup everyone

Welcome to the shiny new blog that we’ll use when we have some news to tell.

Which, incidentally, is the case right now~

We are growing from 8 to 10 people, as we are welcoming two talented artists and good friends of ours with whom we already worked in the past. It was only a matter of time before they joined us really. Meet Typhaine (Tyu) and Héloïse (Helo).

On another subject, next week is Amaze Berlin, a festival for independent games. The whole crew we’ll be here, and we’ll join the hyper talks session (ten 5min long conferences) with a Super Hyper Talk, a hyper talk inside a hyper talk: 5min, 10 people, 30s per talk. It will probably be at bit messy

.

See ya there~

[lucieviatge]

We made a magical girl racing game map in ue4 (as a school assignment) with Tyu and Yadoob and it was awesome <3 really happy with the result ●‿●

[ty-u]

Yadoob Lucie and I made a magical girl race map on UE4 and we are so happy with how it turned out  ♥ 

[ty-u]

Geist is a game concept Ugo Trelis and I worked on in 2015. It was submitted among other concepts, in hope to be selected and get developed during our final year of study. Unfortunately, it  didn’t get picked, and the project is thus abandoned for the moment.

You are stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, there’s only a lighthouse and an old fisherman’s house. You might think that you’re alone, but as you visit the house you see things moving around, and understand that there’s another presence around you.

This ghost is invisible, and you can’t hear it, but you will have to communicate if you want to help each other. To do so, you will use a ouija board and tarot cards. The ouija board allows you to get a word from the ghost, which will serve as a clue, and the tarot cards, when combined together, can be used to phrase questions to the ghost.

You’ll progressively discover more about what happened on this island, who you’re talking to, and collect more tarot cards to add more words to your vocabulary.

Ultimately, this game was meant to follow the classic trope of the ghost story. A tormented soul haunts the main character, and the only way for the character to be rid of it is to learn their story, and help them rest in peace.