Archive for the ‘1GAM’ Category

Guild of Dungeoneering: "Recruit adventurers to explore dungeons for the glory of your Guild. Build the dungeon room by room, fill it with monsters, traps and treasure .. and hope your dungeoneers have what it takes to return victorious!"

Dungeoneering, a perfectly cromulent word.

[A dungeon crawler where you don't get to control the adventurer. Instead you lay out the dungeon one room at a time (including treasure & monsters) and he proceeds according to his AI. You want him to explore, level up, find treasures and ultimately survive - but you don't get to directly control him.]

This is a game I'm creating this month for the Ludum Dare October Challenge. I'm taking a 1GAM game I made called Dungeon Delver and making it fun and replayable, and hopefully by the end of the month I have something good enough to sell a copy of.

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This month I am combining my One Game A Month addiction with something new and exciting: the October Challenge. It is a simple challenge: 'Finish a game — Take it to market — Earn $1'.

Then buy one dollar's worth of cocaine and PARTY

I have recently been finishing a lot of smaller games thanks to game jams and One Game a Month. This is a great feeling and absolutely every wannabe game developer should start by finishing something. However there is another side to becoming a successful independent game developer, namely marketing your game so more than two people hear about it and polishing your game so that those you reach are willing to throw you some cash.

Join me as I outline my plan to polish, market & release a simple game within a month.

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For my One Game A Month August entry I once again decided to go for a one-day gamejam a couple of days before the deadline, since it worked so well last time.

One is the loneliest number..

This time I didn't have any other fellow 1GAM-Dublin jammers, so I proceeded alone. Tucked myself into my man cave for a long Sunday with our theme for the month ('GIVE UP') and got stuck in.

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June had come and gone without having produced my One Game A Month, and I was into the last week of July.. I needed to do something drastic. So I decided to have an impromptu one day gamejam a couple of days before the deadline. Work feverishly all day long and see what pops out the other end!

Make games. Not 1GAM logos.

A couple others from the 1GAM-Dublin google group joined in on the day and we got to work. Our theme for the month by the way was 'KAWAII!!!!'.

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During May I decided to make a physical card game for the One Game A Month challenge. Specifically I wanted to make a game that incorporates the totally sweet drafting mechanic. Drafting is where you deal each player a hand of cards and they pick one to keep and then pass the rest onto their neighbour, repeating til no cards are left.

Why are we all sitting in a row anyway?

As a mechanic it is both easy to grasp and strategically deep – as you become more familiar with the game you are drafting for you start to not only draft to get cards you want, but also to pick cards that you don't want your neighbours getting once you pass on your remaining cards. It's no wonder that such fantastic games as Ascension, Dominion and 7 Wonders all use drafting as a base. Read on to find out how I fared!

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Since gamejams work so well for my gamedev productivity I've decided to take part in a similar monthly challenge: One Game A Month. The basic idea is to try and finish one game every single month – it can be something simple or complex as long as you complete something every month. There is loads more information at onegameamonth.com – I highly recommend taking part!

Make Gamedev Challenges. Not Excuses.

Not only that – but I've helped set up a meetup group for fellow 1GAM enthusiasts in Dublin, Ireland. We are going to meet at the end of every month to playtest each others creations and generally swap war stories. Our very first meetup was last night and was a great success! If you want to join us sign up to the 1GAM-Dublin google group. But what about my game for April? Read on!

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