Snapshot at PAX10 2011

Posted by David Carrigg on July 8th, 2011 in Snapshot

That's right!

You'll be able to play Snapshot at PAX Prime this year along with the other games being recognized in PAX 10. While you're travelling the expo hall during the show, keep an eye out for the PAX 10 booth as well as any Snapshot banners.

We had a blast being in the Boston Indie Showcase at PAX East, and can't wait to show the game off again.

If all goes as planned, Myself (Programming), Peter (Business and Art), Kyle (Art and Design), and WiL (Music) will all be there. Stop by and say hi, or ask us anything about the game.

Boston Game Loop

Posted by Peter Jones on August 30th, 2010 in General

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Last Saturday, Retro Affect attended Boston Game Loop 2010. Self described as an "unconference", BGL starts with absolutely no plan. Attendees spend a half an hour or so discussing topics they'd like to learn more about, and sessions form from those talks. The schedule is put on a board that morning and voila! You have yourself a one day conference, jam packed full of sessions that pique your interest.

On the outside it seems haphazard. However, now in its third year with nearly double the attendance from 2009, something is clearly going right. What makes BGL different is its flexibility. Often lectures became discussions, topics changed slightly (for the better!), and genuine experiences were shared.

We had the fortune of showing off (the new) Snapshot for the first time publicly! It felt great to show the game in motion to fresh eyes. The feedback has been incredibly positive and we can't wait to share more. In one session, we gave a tour of our proprietary engine (RAE) that Dave's been cooking up for the past year. Then later, we were able to talk a bit more design as we showed a room full of onlookers the first few levels of Snapshot. Don't worry! We haven't forgotten about our readers, a video tour of our engine is coming soon...

While the conference was without its share of kinks, it's still young and will, without a doubt, get better with each year. Keep an eye on Boston Game Loop!

Post GDC Summary

Posted by Peter Jones on March 16th, 2010 in General

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Woah, were we in San Francisco last week? A full seven days of catching up with other indies, schmoozing at parties and handing out Snapshot Promo Cards like they were candy....eye candy. Kyle and I kicked things off with the First Annual Indie Disc Golf Open hosted by our friends at Wolfire Games.

photo by Chrissy Chubala

Numbers grew from just a few to at least a dozen indies. Thankfully, no one was injured and further more, no one kept score. It's safe to say we all had a great time catching up, and I hope it becomes a pre-GDC tradition.

Festivities continued into the first day of the conference, and the start of the Independent Games Summit where Ron Carmel explained the Indie Fund. It's an awesome program designed to help fund indie games without the inherent fine print that comes with most publishers. You can read more about it here. To name a few others: John Graham of Wolfire Games spoke on community, Colin Northway gave a postmortem of Fantastic Contraption, and Cactus explained how to torture the player for fun. All in all a great week of sessions.

Thursday night was the Independent Games Festival, an award's show near and dear to Retro Affect's heart. This year's entries were astounding. Monaco by Andy Schatz took the Grand Prize. It's a cooperative game about thievery, stealth, the French and most certainly deserving of its recognition.

There were so many other great games in the mix. The IGF pavillion was easily the hot spot of the conference expo hall. Make sure you check out igf.com to read more about the other finalists.

Those little promotional cards we made worked wonders. They fit so perfectly in our badges it was like we planned it. I even heard of an attendee asking, "Where can I get those badge inserts?" Success! If you managed to snag one these gems, hold onto it! I can't say why quite yet....but let's just say I would contest if you gave away those cards.

The rest of the week saw a lot of parties, a lot of games and very little sleep. So, keep an eye on our blog! We'll post some of our take-aways and I'll have more to report once I recover...