The Dirty Rectangles

Welcome to a whole new year of Show and Tells!! After a nice holiday break, we’re super excited to get back into the swing of these meetups! Our new years resolution is to engage you guys with more open talks and group discussions. We’ll be starting to embark down that road this month.

At January’s Show and Tell we be showcasing Bob McCrindle of the Indie Game Factory, discussing the new progress he’s made in creating his Indie Game Incubator! Following Bob we’ll be hosting our first ever 5 Minute Rant session! Us four Rectangles will be giving quick rants about games and the industries, each under 5 minutes. We will also have a sign up sheet if you want to give your own rant too! Got anything gaming related you’d like to say to a group of people? Now’s your chance!!

After the 5 Minute Rants, we’ll open up the floor to anyone that’s looking to showcase anything they’ve been working on.

WHEN: WEDNESDAY JANUARY 18th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: A WHOLE NEW YEAR! A WHOLE NEW AWESOME!

See you at the Garde!
Rectangles

SUPER AWESOME UPDATE! We’re adding a second Showcase to the December Show and Tell! Travis Boisvenue of Happy Medium, OpenFile, Soundcrimes and more will follow up Ben Kane with a talk on the touchy subject Gamification. We’re super excited to have Travis come give this talk!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 21th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: END OF YEAR PARTY!! LET’S USHER IN 2012 WITH LOVE AND VIDEO GAMES!!

See you at the Garde!
Rectangles

It’s out last Show and Tell of the year people! Here we sit with all these great meet ups under all of our belts. In the past two years YOU have helped grow OUR community into what it is now, a vibrant collection of lovable figures doing interesting things in the medium of games. It’s because of you that we get to keep doing what we love doing and for that we’re pretty gosh darn grateful. You all have turned this into a real community by coming out and supporting each other, throwing high fives, and having a few laughs. So our first year of monthly Show and Tells is drawing to a close, but we’re ringing out the year in style!

This month we’ll be treated by having a talk and demo from local XBLIG indie Ben Kane of Going Loud Studios. Ben is no stranger to the XBLIG market, he’s released 3 games on the platform, Zombie Accountant, Lair of the Evildoer and the newly released DLC Quest. Ben will be coming in to talk to you all about his process, releasing games on XBLIG, and the development of DLC Quest! After Ben’s talk we’ll open up the floor to anyone that wants to show anything off to the crowd! Amaze us!! We’ll gather some “festive” indie games to play as the night moves along!

Hit the jump to here more about Ben Kane and Going Loud Studios!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 21th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: END OF YEAR PARTY!! LET’S USHER IN 2012 WITH LOVE AND VIDEO GAMES!!

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Ah November, fresh Autumn leaves, Corduroy Jackets, a proclivity for the more hirsute look, days get shorter, cereal gets warmer. This doesn’t slow us down! Another great Show and Tell fresh off of the heels of Prince of Arcade.

This month brought together a dream team-up of Ottawa’s game developer communities, us, The Dirty Rectangles, and our buds The International Game Developers’ Association: Ottawa Chapter!

Together we had the pleasure to host an In-depth post-mortem from local game devs Fuel and Playbrains. Patrick White & art director Stephen Daggitt  and Paul Winterhalder gave us in depth insight in to how they went about creating Sideway: New York. Make sure to look it up on Steam or failing that, PSN.

We then opened up the floor

Fellow flat cap aficionado, known also as the internet’s SpindleyQ, Jeremy Penner showed off a tool he has been toiling on for a little while, a telnet based ANSI visualed collaborative suite of nifty tools, MarMOTS, now with animation support! Also check out Glorious Trainwrecks, for some of the rawist indie games around.

Next up we had Fred Di Sano from Hardline Studios, showing off their upcoming muti-platform shooter Alpha Wave, wave based shooter with some really pretty particle effects. Fred also gave us the pleasure of taking a peek under the hood and showed off how he was able to make it so easily multi-platform.

Then, more Baltikas drank and Indie games played!

Big ups to our friends in the IGDA Ottawa Chapter for bringing some new people out!  That’s it see you next month!

Excuse our, totally-natural, high. We just got back from a kicking party!!

November. Crisp leaves on the ground. Mustaches bustling and sprouting. And here we sit with another glorious Show and Tell in front of us.

This month marks a special event as we combine the righteous might of Dirty Rectangles and IGDA. Together we come together like Voltron to unleash a powerful attack in the guise of a Postmortem from local industry folk.

WHEN: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: POSTMORDEM!! PSN!! PANCAKES*!!

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Trick or treat! October’s third Wednesday draws near ushering the glorious time of All Hallows Eve. We’re celebrating the best way we know how, indie games and Russian beers! This months Show and Tell will feature two main presenters, a game and a talk from Rectangles organizers Owen Deery and Derek Ledoux. After the presentations we’ll open up the floor to anyone wanting to show off games and we’ll have a slew of Horror themed games to play too. And this time we promise to put some time aside for Johann Sebastian Joust! Bonus points if you come Joust in a costume!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 19th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: BECAUSE WE’LL SEND THE GHOULS AFTER YOU IF YOU DON’T

Facebook Event Page

Hit the jump to hear more about what Owen and Derek will be presenting!

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The Prince is back…

We’ve been cooking up this years Prince of Arcade indie party for a little while now with our Mount Royal Game Society brothers. And boy do we have some awesomeness in store for the lot of you! We’re so happy to be able to do this for a 2nd year as a wonderful indie after party to the Montreal International Game Summit.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be revealing all the details and games that will be playable at this years Prince. Starting today with this little tease from Les Collegiennes (Renaud Bedard and Devine Lu Linvega).

Pico Battle – Les Collegiennes

More information incoming! Stay Tuned!
Long live the Prince

Goodbye summer it’s been rad, for real. We’ll miss the sun, and the cottages, and the boats, and the video games. Wait we still got those right? School may be in, and vacation days used, but that don’t mean we can’t get down! In fact, we dare say, we need this now more then ever!

Kicking off the new season ( we have season’s now? ) are our Eric McQuiggan will be on hand to demo his new goods. Eric has been with the Kinect and other camera software for some years now and as of late has been building a game to show at this years Prince of Arcade party at MIGS in Montreal. Come get a taste and pick his brain.

After Eric we’ll open up the floor to the lot of you willing to show your wares! Grab some feedback from other devs and get some hearty pats on the back! Derek will curate his way through some cool new indie games as usual, and maybe we’ll find some time for a little Johan Sebastian Joust too!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 21st, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU AND WE’D DO IT FOR YOU

See you at the Garde!
Rectangles

Forgive us, we’re in Summer mode. Roasting on a beach. Gazing at the stars. By all this we mean sitting around making video games. Let’s take a break! How about a Lazy Hazy meetup at our favorite local watering hole! No real presenters pre-lined up for this one! Just come relax with friends over a couple brews. We’ll curate through some awesome new indie games and as usual leave the floor open all night to anyone to wants to demo anything. Hell, bomb-drop a presentation on us! Surprises! Intrigue! Nidhogg! Baked goods!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY AUGUST 17th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: SUMMER FUN BREAK TIME WITH FRIENDS AND GAMES

See you at the Garde!
Rectangles

Hey someone thinks we’re interesting! Just hours ago our voices were decoded into bits, sent into a dark machine for processing, then beamed across the sky in a glorious technicolour radio wave! We just did an interview on CBC Radio One! Thanks to Kathleen Petty for having us on her show!

We chatted about the finer things of the indie dev scene and gave our insights on all things rock and roll. It was a blast! Step one complete, now to get our own radio talk hour… Hmm CBC…?

Listen to the interview over here buddies!