Yet another festival has come and gone, this time being the Freeplay Independent Games Festival in Melbourne. I was there to Exhibit the latest version of Hazard: The Journey Of Life at their Experimedia exhibit, to take part in their awards ceremony, and to also speak on a panel about about how we experience space, both in the physical world and in the virtual world. This morning a writeup of that panel ended up making it’s way to Gamasutra.

As has been the case at other conferences that I’ve demonstrated the game at, the response was overwhelmingly positive from those who played or saw the game. I had quite a few more people come to check out my exhibit after my panel to work out what all of the fuss was about. It’s still not quite where I want it to be yet, but it’s definitely working how I wanted it to as far as the player experience goes.

Now that another set of deadlines is over, I’ve been taking a short break before I can get back into the swing of development properly again. I now need to break out of the habit of working 7 days a week and regain my weekends again, so that I can continue developing more effectively over a longer period of time.

There’s very few things that remain to be built in the game, but there’s still a fair amount of testing that needs to happen as the game gets closer towards its commercial release. I could see as people played through it at Freeplay that there were still a number of instances in the game that posed the same issues for multiple people, and I’m looking to rectify all of that before the game is actually released.

Several people have made the comment that if someone has paid for the game, they’d overcome these issues anyway, but that’s still no excuse for the game to be any less polished than it deserves to be. When I’ve already spent this long working on something, I want to make sure that I get it right, and that I don’t release it and then regret not fixing a few minor things here and there, if I know people will have issues with them.

Once I get back into a proper routine again, I’d like to get back to writing more regular blog posts about various development related topics that I feel strongly about, or where I have good experience to share. We’ll soon know how that’s working out for me, but I’m well aware that as I stepped full swing back into development that updates to this site ended up coming to a crawl.

So there I was, standing around the office water cooler (the one that all indies share) having a nice private chat with Rich and Rudolf, when some jerk in a beanie comes along and starts taking our picture. You know that awkward moment when you’re having a conversation that you don’t want others to hear, and someone else moseys on over? You quickly change the topic of conversation, go half silent and talk about the weather… well… that’s what this was like. He insisted that he was running some publicity for a local charity fund, just taking pictures of the friendly locals… next thing I know, our conversation is on the internet. I KNEW something was up with that water cooler! It was making a strange mechanical sound, like an old cassette player.  I asked Ichiro if he knew what was up with it, and he just said “no it’s fine” and walked away quickly.

Well, at least now I know how the other indies had their conversations leaked as well. They didn’t catch me saying anything too damaging, so I guess I’m fine with it. They could have used a better camera though. I mean, what the hell? Despite having a massive lens (and the photographer having some sweet glasses), it didn’t even have Red Eye Reduction. I didn’t even think it was possible to take a black and white photo but still have the red eye effect. I look like some kind of crazed monster! Well… more than I normally do anyway.

What is this image I have just posted? Free…? Play…? Isn’t all play free!? Why, not if you’re in an arcade it’s not. Then you have to pay $1 or $2 per credit, and the games are often so insanely hard that you’ll end up dying within a few minutes, only to be asked to insert more credits. The bane of every parent’s wallet, and a way to waste the lunch money of anyone under 15 years of age.

Anyway, this post wasn’t supposed to be about arcades at all. This post was meant to inform you that I’ll be speaking at an event called Freeplay next month, along with a some other notable people relevant to the indie world, such as Adam Saltsman, Brandon Boyer and Farbs. There’ll also be a whole lot of local Australian developers. So, if you’re in Melbourne and you’re looking for something to do on the 14th and 15th of August, you can find details about this event by clicking on this text which is inconspicuously highlighted!

Perhaps I’ll see you there.

So now that the dust has settled, I thought I’d do a quick post summing up a handful of the responses from E3. These are in response to the full version of the game, which features a significant number of improvements over the demo that was posted in May, so people were able to get a feel for the game as a complete experience, rather than just the initial segment that is online right now. Some of these responses are just peoples impressions from random websites that mentioned the game, others are specifically about the game, but nonetheless, they were all very positive responses.

IGN wrote a feature about standing out at E3 when you’re not Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft. Getting featured on IGN is very nice, and I’m glad my game stood out enough to them to include it in an article about standing out!

The Guardian, a UK Magazine, ended up selecting Hazard as one of their top 12 games of E3, alongside Assassins Creed, Bulletstorm, Killzone 3, etc. which was pretty cool. It’s good to see Kirby’s Epic Yarn on that list as well. That game looked pretty fun and fresh, though I didn’t get to play it at the event. I’m not even sure if it was playable there, but it looked quite entertaining in the Nintendo Press Conference.

PCGamer was quite impressed by the game. In an article that was about Rock Band 3 of all things, I grabbed this lovely quote: “Honestly, Harmonix’s demo was one of the best I’ve seen at the show (the others: Crysis 2, and a brilliant indie game called Hazard: The Journey of Life).” So there you have it, a game made by a guy in his bedroom was able to stand out next to some massively commercial titles!

The guys from IndiePub went around and recorded interviews with the IndieCade exhibitors. At the time, I wasn’t aware it was being filmed until about half way through it, hence why it seems like they asked one question and got a 3 minute response! The demo mentioned at the end of this video is the same one that went onto the UDK Showcase in May, so if you’ve already played that, there’s nothing new to play yet. I’ll do a new demo when the game is finished, but for now I’ve still got deadlines that require the completed game.

Someone over at GameCritics wrote about Hazard in their impressions of E3 and found the game “freaking bizarre”, saying that it was “definitely one to watch”. I think I may have shown these guys the game towards the end of the last day, so if this was written by the people I’m thinking about, they got to see me blast through a whole lot of content in about 15 minutes before the show closed.

I find it hard to judge how people are absorbing what I’m showing them in the game, because everything seems second nature to me. As some people pointed out, it’s not at all! Some people from a website called 4 color rebellion wrote their impressions of E3, with one person stating: “Hazard: The Journey of Life seemed more mind-bending to me now than Portal was those few years ago when it was an entirely new concept.”

This seemed to be a pretty consistent theme in peoples feedback. After posting an interview with IndieCade festival director Sam Roberts, the interviewer threw out a mention for my game, also describing it as “mindblowing”.

So, if you’ve played the demo and you’re wondering how far I can really take a game about philosophy, rest assured there’s a whole lot of game that you’ve not experienced at all. Even for people who played the old UT3 mod, there’s a whole lot more that exists now and is coming in the future than there was in that old version as well. After all, that version was made in my spare time, whilst this year I’ve basically had the full year to just work on the game for a commercial release.

It still doesn’t yet have all of the interesting content that I plan on adding, and I’ve optimised the hell out of the game so that it runs very smoothly even when there’s a bunch of geometry manipulation happening. I know that there’s a bunch of people that insist on trying to run it on several year old computers, given it “looks simple”, and while I can’t remove the requirements imposed by Unreal Engine 3, I’m doing everything I can to make sure that the experience is at least highly consistent for people.

Now hold on a minute. Don’t go away. I’m not insulting you. I’m just pointing you towards this excellent website. Why, you ask? Well, aside from being very interesting, I was first drawn to it when a friend linked the following video from a post titled The Moment:

If you’re wondering why I posted this (aside from it being excellent), I was going to justify my reasoning, but decided it would be better to just leave it as is.

Several years ago, I started watching the press conferences for E3. In my time zone, they would always play at around 2am in the morning, but every year I would stay up late and watch them all. I used to love watching all of the news filter out throughout the week of E3, where the gates were opened and you would find out about all of the games that were coming out in the following year. It always seemed like it would be the coolest event ever to go to, but alas, that was something that I knew would never happen. You know, in the same way that visiting Japan was something that I would do “eventually”, and creating my own game was something that I would try “some day”. Last week I exhibited Hazard at E3 as part of IndieCade.

It wasn’t really the E3 that I expected to go to. I didn’t get time to look around and see much of the convention center, because people never stopped playing Hazard while I was there. A few minutes after the show floor opened each day, someone would have their interest piqued by the flashy colours of the trailer, and then sit down to find out more. Then, for the rest of the day, I wouldn’t get any more than a minute or two to try and take a break between demoing the game to people, because there was always someone else waiting to try the game themselves. I tried having lunch on the first two days and failed at my attempts of finding enough free time, so on the third day I didn’t even bother trying.

I can’t really get a good indication of how many people actually got to experience the game. While I was showing it off to one person, there’d be 10 other people standing around watching what was going on, experiencing the game second hand. Then, when I finished demoing the game to that person, someone else would sit down, saying they only caught the second half of the demonstration, and the cycle would continue.

I had the full version of the game there, so I would quickly guide people through the sections that can be found in the demo, so that they could get an understanding of abstract spatial relations, an introduction to dynamic geometry, and a feel for the philosophy in the game, before I’d then unlock everything and show off the other important facts about the game: How many puzzles there were in the game, how large the playspace was, how many hours it would take to complete the game, and all of the geometry manipulation that could be done as the game progressed.

People really liked the game. A few people asked me to slow down and show them specific things again, to try and work out what the hell they’d just seen. I take everything for granted, as I know the game so well back to front, so it’s hard knowing how it all seems to a fresh set of eyes. A few people left the booth still a little unsure as to whether they understood the game, one person suggested adding quests to the game (which I’m definitely not going to do), though almost everyone really appreciated what the game was doing. The game was taking them for a ride, and it all seemed really fresh to them, because they had no idea what was going to happen next.

Other than all of the demoing that I did of my own game, I only got to walk around the show floor once or twice. I was there the day before the conference, so I could see everything still being set up, and I walked around early in the morning of the last day before everything opened so that I could absorb the atmosphere. I’m not sure whether it was because I’d seen everything in a half finished state, because I’d seen all of this stuff before in Tokyo, or because I was too caught up thinking about having to demo my own game the entire time, but things just didn’t seem as special as I’d imagined. Watching videos online from these events made everything feel magical, but being there in person, I felt like I’d seen it all before. It was just another exhibition… only it was bigger, and with more lights.

Overall, I’d say going to E3 was a very worthwhile experience. It gave me another 3 days of watching waves of people experience the game for the first time, and gave me a bunch more things to follow up on. If nothing else, it’s another tick against the list of things that would be cool to experience at some stage. I’m currently taking a break for a few days to recover, before I kick back into gear and finish off the rest of the game for release. I’d love for people to be able to play it right now, but it’s not quite done yet, so the wait will be a little bit longer.

Something has happened. Maybe I’m hallucinating. Or maybe this is all just a dream. I don’t know, but something isn’t right. I don’t recall much, other than looking at my watch and glancing at the time. June 13th, 5:40pm. Normally I wouldn’t remember that, but this I could never forget.

You know that feeling where you look at a clock and it seems as though a single second goes on for an eternity? Like the whole world has stopped moving, and for that single moment, you’re frozen in time, left to ponder the insignificance of your existence. One random occurrence of life, spawned randomly out of the stars… Well, this was nothing like that feeling. This was worse. Time hadn’t stopped… it had been reversed.

I probably sound like an insane person when I say this, but I swear before what I saw. Between two random moments of checking my watch, I had somehow spawned 30 minutes of additional lifespan. I didn’t believe it at first. I looked up, cleared my mind, and then looked back at my watch, and there it was again. June 13th, 5:10pm. Somehow… I’m not sure how, I had traveled back in time, but my body felt as though it took me 14 hours to get there.

I wish it had stopped there, but things only became more bizarre. I looked up again, and realised that not only was I in a different time, I was in a different place. Nothing looked familiar. I mean, there were still people around me, but they spoke strangely. It felt almost as though I was watching TV, but I wasn’t watching it through a screen. I was living in it. Everyone sounded exactly as they did there… only they were here… I’m not making any sense.

I tried to find my bearings. I asked a stranger where I was, and they mentioned something about the Lost Angels. I don’t know what that means. I asked no further questions, for fear of standing out. I was different to these people, and it was immediately apparent from the way I spoke. I had to find shelter, just in case I had ended up somewhere really bad.

I’m writing this from what I think should be a safe place for the night. For now I have taken refuge in a house which I think may be in a ghetto region. Nothing tells me why, that’s just how I feel about it. Maybe I’m just overworked, maybe I’m just tired, or maybe none of this is real. For now, I can’t be certain of anything, so I’ll sign off and try to work out what the hell is going on in the morning.

Ok, so, hear me out. Listen to my entire story before making any judgements about me, but I really have to get this off my chest.

It seems that I will have to take another short break from developing Hazard to go to another conference. Much against my will, I am being forced, kicking and screaming, to travel across the ocean because I was selected for Indiecade @ E3. There I was, just minding my own business while chipping away at the development of this game, and out of the blue I get a message saying “You there. Stop. Stop everything! Get over here!” The nerve that they have! Unfathomable!! I hate flying. Sitting in tiny little chair on a plane for hours, with plenty of time to think about how terrible your experience is going to be. What’s there to see around the world anyway that I couldn’t see from right here on my own computer, looking at Google Image Search?

So now, and this is the worst part, rather than working on fixing random bugs and pushing geometry around, I have to stand at some booth demonstrating a fully playable version of my game to people at E3. *sigh* Now all of my development plans will be wrong because I have to go overseas for a week. I’m not sure what my boss will think about this, but I really don’t think I’ll be able to talk my way out of going. He’ll just say I can make up the lost time by working weekends or something. Great… Not very helpful at all.

PS: Just in case you’re wondering, this post is entirely sarcastic and I am in fact totally psyched to be going to E3 because this is awesome!!

Just a quick post, that has nothing to do with the actual development of the game, but really resonates with why I set out to create it in the first place. This video really sums up why I took this year off full time to finish it properly, knowing that I’m not getting any money from my efforts until I get around to actually selling the game when it’s done.

Just a quick update. There’s a demo of Hazard now available as part of the UDK Showcase, which you can find a link to here: http://udk.com/showcase-hazard

I’ll probably go off and add this to the Hazard page now. Although the game in general is still a work in progress, this demo is a good representation of the flow of the first 5th or so of the game.

Please refer to the FAQ if you have issues with the game. Common issues are getting stuck (which is a design issue), blue screens (which are a driver issue) and remapping controls (which is yet to be implemented, but can be changed manually). The game is still a work in progress.