Indie Game: The Movie

Posted on May 6, 2012 by Steven

I saw Indie Game: The Movie last week with the Full Indie Group. It was very cool! A heart warming story of developers putting it all on the line and the trials they face to get their game out on the market. It was a very neat event followed by a live broadcast across Canada of a Q&A session with the Filmmakers and one of the developers from the film. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it to others.

If you missed my earlier post about Indie Game: The Movie, check out the trailer post here.

Double Fine Awesomeness!

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Steven

Inspiration that brings your passion for games to life, or afterlife.

I love Tim Schafer’s work. He’s so awesome. Who’s Tim Schafer you say? Why he’s the fantastic guy (along with his awesome art, programming, and other useful things Team) who brought Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, and helped to bring in the Secret of Monkey Island. I am proud to say that I’m a kickstarter backer of his fabulous new game from Double Fine called Adventure! (probably a placeholder name) but it’s an Adventure! game – so why not? Yaharr!

I'd give my right tentacle to work with Tim.

He was looking to raise $400,000 but – no doubt because he is so awesome and gave us such stellar adventure games that we’ve been craving his games for the past umpteen billion years! (at least I have) – he raised over $3,300,000! My gosh that is not only so cool, but it’s also exactly what he deserves. To know that we love his talent and style and we bloody well want adventure games to come back!

I’m so excited about his endeavour that I’m beginning my own little adventure game (I’m only a team of one at this point). I’ve got the concept of a kid going out in the rain with his umbrella and meeting various characters (thinking talking ducks, cats, etc.) but I also just want him to muck around in puddles and such and go on an adventure in his mind. So perhaps I’ll scrap any dialogue and make a voiceless adventure. That would be fun (maybe have little “Whees!” when the kid jumps or “ouch!” if the kid does something wrong or something like that.) Oh and yes, I specifically want this to be a kid so bundled up in his rain coat that the kid is whatever gender you want. (That’s not so important to the story so I want everyone to put what they feel is important into the character themselves.)

Anyway, that’s my thoughts for now. I love Double Fine! I love Tim Schafer! and I love adventure games! whoo!!! *runs off with arms gesticulating wildly*

Rockin’ Plants VS Zombies!

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Steven

So, Plants VS Zombies was on sale on Steam recently and I love me them Plants Vs Zombies. So I picked it up and went to town on it. I love it! so much fun! Here’s my winning strategy for Survival Pool (HARD).

Start with the sunflowers, split peas and the walls of nuts and quickly add the spike terrain so that the zombies are hurt as they attack the wall. Then add the right hand column of spikes and start upgrading the left column of spikes. (Upgrade the right ones first if against a level with vehicles so that the spikes don’t disappear when the vehicle drives on ’em) Then add your frozen peas and you’re good to go! With the water level, get at least one cattail early on (around when you’re adding the first column of spikes) and add the rest when you get the cash. Finally add the pumpkin walls going left to right. These are to protect your plants from the miners so your split peas can shoot the miners while you have no casualties. I forgot about the cattails redirecting to take out the miners, but it’s still cool.

I added the middle column of pumpkins in the centre just for fun. Also, note the sunshine! I have full! I can’t get more! yahoo! (got an achievement around 8000)

Global Game Jam 2012

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Steven

The Global game Jam was great this year. I volunteered at the start and the finish. I love getting to be with all the enthusiasm and excitement of building a game over 48 hours. I had been quadruple-booked that weekend or else I would have joined in. Everyone wanted to do stuff that weekend, but that’s okay I got to be a part of the event, play some games, see friends, and generally have a great time the whole weekend.

Steven Pugh Starts a New Job!

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Steven

I’m really excited and honoured to get to work for Electric Playground! I will be their webmaster starting on Tuesday. This is really wonderful and feels like my dream of working in the Game Industry is reaching fruition more and more everyday. This is so awesome! We’ve got some good revitalization plans and goals to grow the site a hundred fold. Wowee! Excuse me for one moment.

YAAAHOOO!!!!

*ahem* thank you. Electric Playground is a show (both online and television) that covers Video Games, Movies, Comic books and anything cool* (*i.e. geeky). Greedy Productions also has a hysterical show called Reviews on the Run with reviews of shows, games, apps, and other great stuff. It’s hilarious, informative, and fun! A big thank you out to Victor Lucas, host and fantastic CEO of Greedy Productions Ltd. (the owning company of EP, Rotr, and Greedy Docs)!

Fringe Festival 2011

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Steven

Alright, the summer is winding down (what little there was in Vancouver) but that means only one thing: The Fringe Festival is coming to town!

September 6 – 24th there are going to be tons of plays put on by talented artists! I am renewing my vigilance this year on seeing productions in odd locations. I am going to check out “Wreckage” down at the docks, and a “Truck full of Chickens” both sound interesting Bring your own venue locations. (I’m hoping that while it’s at a church that it’s just using the parking lots for a truck of audience members.)

I am also going to be checking out the “Peter ‘n’ Chris Show!” Because every year it has been hilarious and fun!

Another one that looks like it’s in a strange venue is by Itsazoo Productions. Under a bridge and I think with a boat… called “Stay away from my boat @$$hole!” Peter (or was it Chris) I first saw in an Itsazoo Productions and they were fantastic. So I recommend it highly.

You may also notice that my screenshots conveniently include some other plays… whoops! heehee (maybe they will appeal to you if my recommendations don’t.) If you didn’t notice, you can also click on the pictures to be taken to a page with more details on them. So go check out the Fringe Festival and support the artists!

Geeking out on Game Theory

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Steven

Alright, so my iPhone app has fallen a bit behind schedule because of a minor distraction. I stumbled across a series of FREE video podcasts of Yale Lectures on Game Theory! I thought, “Well I know I like this stuff. I’ve seen some of it before. It should be a nice little show to watch during lunch breaks.” Now I cannot seem to get enough! It’s so addicting! Everything from Prisoner’s Dilemma, to Mixed Strategies (both of which I’ve seen before), to Credible Threats and negotiations. It’s fantastic! They’ve done a good job at the class and I just love the material. I must say that it also helps that there aren’t exams for me to take, but still – yummy stuff! I eat it up like… well like great novels! I should read more of those again…

Anyway, I highly recommend that if you haven’t checked out Yale’s free lecture series on the iTunes Store under Video podcasts then you really should!

Check it out here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=341651977

In other news, I am working on functional polish to make sure all the working bits of the iPhone game are nice and slick and easily extend-able for future updates. Art and Music are next on the slate!

Full Indie Game Jam

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Steven

This past weekend at Great Northern Way Campus I helped the Full Indie Game Development Group, led by Jake Birkett, host a 48 hour game jam! Over 10 games were made with 31 participants (plus some of the helpers even made games or worked on personal indie projects) in the time frame of 48 hours.

I really enjoy helping out with game jams. They’re filled with a wonderful experimental spirit and you see results fast! I’ve helped out with 3 game Jams and participated in 2. The theme this time was Spawning. Some great ideas that came out this time were:

an Augmented Reality Game where you guide your UFO over soldiers and abduct them and turn them into aliens
a real-time strategy game a la Nanowars, but set in the theme of the famed book (and now TV series) “Game of Thrones” (and don’t forget the awesome board game!)
MutatoMatch: a block destroyer like bejeweled except instead of trying to get sets of three you’re trying to destroy the right type of block to mutate your creature into the kind of creature that will survive on a planet

If you’re interested in more of the details of what happened during the event, you can see a news feed of events happening during the jam on the Facebook page for Full Indie. I helped out with a lots of those posts while another helper took photos.

Phone Dying

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Steven

Hi there!

Just a quick note to all that these past few days my phone has been dying on me an dropping calls all over the place. I’ve been looking over new phones and am making the switch today. If you’ve been trying to get in touch but haven’t been getting through then I’m sorry and I should be contactable again really soon.

Thanks!