Got back from Montreal this morning having stayed at a great hostel and eaten some delicious food at Cora’s; a great breakfast place with Cora’s image branded on everything but the wallpaper. Gamma 3d itself was a blast as you can tell from the pictures. jj<3 and I each got a pair of nifty 3D glasses at the entrance with our admission fee of five loonie(s) and then continued on to play from the selection of curated stereoscopic game as well as drink and bust moves to nice beats. And yes, they did play Crystal Castles.

so first BlottoBrace by Antony Blackett, Corie Geerders, and James Everett - offered a nice mix of complexity and a moderate learning curve which worked for its advantage; it made you try harder and continue playing until you got that triangle shape just right. In the game you control a black paintbrush in this constantly moving vortex tunnel that brings up empty shapes which you must quickly draw with the joystick to continue or otherwise crash against the shape at high speed. very nice game overall.

Fireflies by Lee Byron and Joannie Wu was actually made by using OpenFrameworks, and it was a great example of its versatility. The controls were a stand out along with visual design. you control a first person view child avatar out at night capturing fireflies by using the left and right shoulder buttons for each respective appendage.

The sound design for this game is also very good but you wouldn’t know this from the party since none of the games had any audio for obvious reasons, massive headphones would have been nice. Stereoscopy was a nice touch here since the dark background really highlighted the fireflies and made the act of chasing them more intuitive.This game, as well as the rest, was very short, sweet and to the point; which completely plays to the strengths of independent gaming and serves as the perfect fuck you to the 40 + hour game industry.

We moved on to AltiToad (Tim Winsky and Johanna Arcand) which was a joy to play, I mean come on, that title is great! First thing you do here is jump off a plane and fall into a cluster of clouds and wire frame floating platforms from which you must bounce on and forth to collect bonuses and get help from a myriad of birds. I kept dying unfortunately but saw someone who completely killed the game which was nice.

Then we played the house game: Super HYPERCUBE (Kokoromi/Polytron), this was the night’s favorite by far. Not only was the line to play it ten people long most of the night but the game served as a perfect backdrop for the DJ’s spins.

This game took some of my favorite recent geek-pop and turned it into a devilishly simple update of the tetris mechanic. If you have ever watched that one japanese tv game show were people are rushed by a wall and must jump thru the odd shaped hole in its center then you have an idea of what this game is about(if you havent then scroll down to an earlier post and youll see). Minimalist visual design and intuitive control lets you focus on the solid gameplay: rotate the oddly shaped tatraminoes and fit them through the hole in the far off wall that is slowly looming closer and closer. This alone makes for a great time but add to it Johnny Lee’s wii controller hack and a pair of 3D glasses fitted with infrared LEDs and you have a superb game that tracks your head movement and lets you peer around an object by leaning and moving your head around the center axis of the screen:

like I said this was really well received and rightly so. Although I read in offworld.com that Kokoromi/Polytron will be releasing the regular version out soon without the wii capability, but couldn’t they release the code for the wiimote as well? There are many people who would love to tinker further with this… here’s a link to a Creative Commons license.

the party was also the perfect excuse to drink white russians and play Nintendo’s old Virtual Boy, except for the white russian part because the barkeep couldn’t make me one. The games: Red Alarm and Warrio Land.

The last two games were The Depths To Which I Sink (Jim McGinley) and Paper Moon (Infinite Ammo - Alec Holowka, Christopher Lobay, Ian Holowka, Katie De Sousa- w/ Adam Saltsman). Both were stylish and goergeous in their own right. The Depths to Which I Sink title was an abstract metaphor for its game mechanics and was also the best example of stereoscopy used in its design:

This minimalist and sorta mod game has you controlling a little blue dot that you move around the screen chasing after grid shapes (windows) which you destroy with the A button (launch).

The best part of it is that this action would subtly sink and then raise the dot to the surface changing its dimesions accordingly and thus creating an incredible sense of space and depth. This game offered the most cinematic experience of the night and Im looking forward to playing it at home(get it here now!).

Incredibly beautiful and much too fast for my camera, Paper Moon rocked it by being a solid platformer with the ability to “pop” parts of the scenery from background to foreground with the press of a button. Definetely the game with the most character and with the best visual design, not sure about sound and will have to download it for that but it should not dissapoint being from the Winnipeg based Infinite Ammo.

Great party, now more pictures:

laslty all the games should be downloadble here soon.

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