Global Game Jam 2013: Deadbeats

Last year I participated in GGJ 2012 to produce the pun-tastic Heaven & Shell. This year James, Ben, Owen and I from Opposable Games worked together at the 2013 Global Game Jam, run by Explay and held at the head offices of Creative England in Bristol.

For those unfamiliar with the game jam format; it consists of a theme, a team and 48 hours to make a game. Global Game Jam is a bit special in that it happens simultaneously at 300+ sites around the world, with over 3000 games produced by more than 10,000 insane, sleepless developers.

This theme this year was the sound of a heartbeat, which we were keen not to interpret too literally, and after much deliberation the idea of Day of the Dead characters came up and no-one can really remember why.

Team:
James Parker: code, Unity
Ben Trewhella: code, Unity
Owen Davies: code, Unity
Nat Al-Tahhan: Art

We also had experienced jammer Gaz Williams providing sound ('Hello, we need a Mexican heartbeat please'). I haven't done artwork assets for 3D in a while, resulting in James, with increasing weariness, explaining that things that are smaller are further away.

48 hours and a considerable number of Jaffa Cakes later, we had Deadbeats, a competitive multiplayer platformer where the goal is to be the last skull standing by jumping on each other's heads. You can change planes by standing on moving platforms which switch in time with the heart beat, resulting in really nice perspective changes and allowing for tactical gameplay (if you want. I prefer the 'run around frantically pressing all the buttons' style myself).

Here are some screenshots, you can view the GGJ entry and download PC version here or play the web version here.

Clockwork Racers for iOS

During testing of Clockwork Racers I got my mum and teenage sister playing, and within 5 minutes my sister was on the verge of nutting my mum for driving into a the side of a giant lollipop for three laps.

Now YOU TOO can have the dysfunction in your family disguised by cute clockwork toys and oversized confectionary, just in time for Christmas too. Available to download for free on iOS. More info here.

Big thanks and congrats to the rest of the Opposable Games team, it's great to finally have this out there!

Develop's 30 Under 30

Holy crap! I'm on Develop's 30 under 30 list this year! For the unititiated, Develop is a games industry trade body and each year they put together a list of 30 devs who are under 30 years of age who they deem to be worth knowing about. Big congrats to everyone who made the list.

"Develop’s annual talent spotlight has returned to shine a light on the young talent of today; those people on the frontlines of development who are shaping the games industry of tomorrow."

Shaping the games of tomorrow? Responsibility! I'll take it. Here is my top 10 list of things I want to achieve in the games industry in the not-too distant future:

• Do more science games.
• Keep game jammin'.
• Encourage the development community in Bath.
• Hire a lady coder.
• Continue working and socialising with amazing devs.
• Storm SEGA HQ, commandeer Sonic Team and make good Sonic games again (I understand this is a long-shot but it's good to stretch your ambitions).
• Play more games. Yeah.
• Go to Tokyo again and BUY ALL THE THINGS. I mean DO LOTS OF RESEARCH.
• Become a dinosaur/cyborg. That's not really a games dev mission as much as a life mission.
• Oh yeah, make some more games.

If you're too lazy to click links and scroll down then a) shame on you and b) here's my entry:

NAT AL-TAHHAN
 
Director, Opposable Games

27-year-old Opposable co-founder Al-Tahhan defines the visual quality and feel of her studio’s output, and was instrumental in creating the world and characters for their first release, Clockwork Racers. She has a history in print and product design, and is a regular on the games jam circuit. Her ‘blisteringly quick’ output has also led to her providing live drawing for meetings and conferences with clients including TED and the Wellcome Trust.

Visual note-taking roundup

I'm so bad at doing regular blog posts and Autumn is conference/event season so I've been all over the place doing visual note-taking, here's a roundup of some pieces:

Venturefest Bristol 2012

Bath Identity Workshop

TEDxYouth@Bath 2012

Bristol Social Enterprise Conference 2012

Creative Exchange Network Wales workshop

LSE Social Care Unconference

Game jam: Explay '12 with the Wellcome Trust

With rather embarrassing tardiness, here's a quick run-down of the game made at the ExPlay 2012 game jam, supported by the Wellcome Trust:

Game: Mimic
Time: 24 hours
Theme: Deception
Team: Mike Cobb - programmer, Nat Al-Tahhan - artist, Alastair Callum - designer, Nick Dymond - sound.

Moments after doughnuts, giant buttons and mistrels were hidden under the table.
No-one looks guilty about it.

You are a microbe, to pass through the membrances of cells you must disguise yourself as the inhabitant cells of that area, but to what end?

Here are a bunch of pictures:

And a game play video made by the mighty Mike Cobb:

Visual note-taking: Explay Bootcamp '12

As you probably don't know, I was at the ExPlay interactive festival last year live-drawing it's Bootcamp part of the event. Explay represents the independent games development industry across the South West of England and hold an annual conference that attracts leading speakers from the indie games circuit. ExPlay is also involved with the games community throughout the year through meet-ups and holding game jams. 

The festival is coming to my neck of the woods over the next couple of months, with it's events being held in Bristol and Bath. Bootcamp this year was at the beautiful Folly Farm on the outskirts of Bath. However it was totally cut off from phone reception and internet, making the perfect place for one person to go missing every half hour, which I was convinced was going to happen.

When I wasn't having internet-withdrawl I was live-drawing the ideas, quotes and advice from the Bootcamp sessions, hopefully providing delegates with an engaging and useful reminder of key points (full view here, stupid Blogger):

The schedule was packed with useful talks and activities, superbly organised and Folly Farm were so hospitable. A great couple of days all in all, as evidenced by these photos and everyone still being alive:

Too cute to eat! (Almost)

Gamers socialising. Not really.

Talk: Creative Bath Design Matters

The problem with doing quite a lot of different things and doing work for organisations like TED is that sometimes people ask you to stand in a room of peering faces and talk about it. Susan Cain made one of the most popular TED talks ever about introversion, in fact her talk may be the only reason I don't mind telling you that when I was invited to speak at a Creative Bath Design Matters breakfast I was honoured and excited and TERRIFIED.

Creative Bath, an organisation that puts on events, forums and get-togethers for people working in the creative sector in Bath. Once a month they hold a 'Design Matters' breakfast meeting with a bunch of creatives, a speaker, and plenty of croissants. A couple of months ago I was invited to speak at one, and after a few mini-panic attacks, I did so.

My talk centered on three areas: live drawing, gamification and multi-disciplinary skillsets. The feedback afterwards, and on Twitter, was wonderful and I really hope the talk was interesting and beneficial to everyone in attendance. Plus I only had three pain au chocolat stains on my notes, so all in all a win.

For those who couldn't be there or are interested, here are the slides from the talk:

NatAlt @ Creative Bath Design Matters from natalt

Visual note-taking: TEDxBristol 2012

After months of organisation, TEDxBristol finally happened. With inspiring speakers, a great audience and some super performers it was another great year and an event the team are proud to deliver.

Live-drawing TED events are always exciting, and the variety of subject matters at TEDxBristol meant that everyone was kept on their toes to hear about the future of robotics, death, food, mind-control and more and I got to draw a bunch of cool stuff. Click for full-view goodness.

TEDxBristol 2012: Web & print design

UPDATE: Here are a couple of shots of the programme and badges:

For the second year running, I'm designing for TEDxBristol, covering everything from branding and web to promo, programmes, posters and t-shirts. I'll also be live-drawing the event on the day as I did at TED2012 recently.

Our theme this year is FutureShock, with speakers from a diverse selection of backgrounds who will be letting us know what revolutionary tech and methods are in store for the future of their industries. I'm hoping for some robots, preferably the vacuuming kind and not the Skynet kind, but I can work either way.

If you're interested in attending, have an idea for a speaker or performer, or just want to keep up with what's going on, visit TEDxBristol and have a poke around.

Click for full view:

TEDxBristol home page

TEDxBristol Facebook page

TEDxBristol Twitter page

I'm talking here

Like design? Like breakfast? Like to look at people talking about design over breakfast?

If so, you should come to the next Creative Bath Design Matters breakfast. It's on Monday Sep 24th at JikaJika in Bath. If you need more than the promise of pain au chocolat, then I'll be talking about live-drawing, gamification and mulch-disciplinary skill sets, more info here.

Click here to agree to stuff a croissant in your face while I talk at you about pictures.