Hail travelers!

We’re continuing our Spring Cleanup Series this month with a special focus on Sound and Music! We got some serious audio pros in this city and three of them will be presenting this month, showing you some tricks and lessons when dealing with audio in games. Audio is a vastly underlooked aspect of game making, but no more!! We’ll chat about the importance of audio, and you’ll come out of it with some new tools under your belt, or at least an appreciation for the craft of sound design.

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April is a time for cleaning our your closet, getting rid of all your useless junk and streamlining your life a little bit. Or so they say… Well we propose streamlining your game dev too! This month we’ll be hosting a special Unity Primer Extravaganza at our Show and Tell! We’ll have 4 local Unity pros on deck showing you everything you’ll need to get started with Unity, and giving a few tips and tricks useful for more experienced Unity developers.

Hit the jump below to find out who our Unity local heroes are, and get more deets about this months Show and Tell!

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Sorry, with all the loveliness of March we’re totally feeling the haiku’s lately. Hey, so we made a new BFF recently and decided we’d throw a fun event together! The conversation sorta went like this…

Us - “Hey girrrrl!”
Them – “Heeeey giirrrl!”
Us - “So we hear you dudes are into videogames and people that make videogames.”
Them - “Yeah we’re totally all about people and games and stuff.”
Us - “Cool… cool… Us too, man. We should do something together! Something cool!”
Them - “Yeah man!”
Us - “Wanna come up to Ottawa?”

So who is this mysterious new forever friend??

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We hear people have been making a lot of games lately! There’s been a game jam on a global scale, a monthly challenge of strength and fortitude, and an explosion of amazing new games launching each week. We’re thinking we should all get together and talk about it a bit.

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Holidays are over gang! Time to get back to work! It’s been a while since we’ve all hung out though so we were thinking of getting the whole gang back together! Announcing the first of our monthly Show and Tells for 2013! You’re going to want to be there for this one!

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We’re planning on taking a break in December so join us for our last Show and Tell of 2012!! Come celebrate this wonderful season of showcases we’ve had this year and pat yourselves on the back! All of this happened because of you!! And you are the Ottawa we’re interested in!

Our main showcase this month will come from Anthony Bongers of Smoke Labs, a small mobile studio here in downtown Ottawa! Smoke Labs is a new company funded by John Criswick of Magmic fame, comprised completely of Algonquin graduates. The studio consists of only 4 programmers including Anthony, and one artist. Currently they are working on two titles, Arty’s Quest for Nuts a ‘runner’ style game about a squirrel on a skateboard collecting nuts before winter, and Fridge Frenzy, a word creation game mixed with magnetic poetry!

After Anthony we’ll take a quick look at some of the games being developed for the Ottatron Game Jam which is currently underway RIGHT NOW!! It’s not too late to join in either! Take a look at our forums we just linked too for all the information you need to start making games for our beloved Ottatron!

We’ll make sure we have lots of time for the open floor this month! It’s your last chance to show off your games and get feedback from our audience this year! Make it count!! We love seeing your work and being inspired by it!!

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 21th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: LAST SHOW AND TELL OF THE YEAR!!

See you at the Garde
Rectangles

Let’s embrace our failures at this months Rectangles meetup. We’re opening the floor to anyone who would like to show off and talk about a project of theirs that didn’t go anywhere or just didn’t work. We want to hear about the trial and error that happens when making games. We’ll show off some of our past blunders and hope you do too! It takes a lot of mistakes to land on that solid game, or maybe there’s still something to that thrown away idea.

Hey kids, let’s jam! We’re kicking off a month long game jam starting from the Show and Tell on the 17th for the Ottatron cocktail cabinet! All the games made during the jam will end up in the Ottatron and placed in a public setting in Ottawa!! Wait, whats the Ottatron you say? We made a retro cocktail arcade cabinet, and we need your games! Derek Ledoux will demo games made for the Ottatron and give out spec info for the jam at the Show and Tell!!

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: BECAUSE!

See you at the Garde
Rectangles

Summer has come and gone. The wind and starting to chill. It’s back to school time, and we want to teach you a little something at Rectangles University!

Our September Show and Tell will feature Ottawa game development veteran Jeff Murray of Psychic Parrot Games! Jeff has been around the Ottawa game dev scene since 2005 when he moved from England to Ottawa to become the Director of Game Development at Fuel Youth. Since leaving Fuel, Jeff has formed his own game studio, Psychic Parrot where he creates mobile and downloadable titles. Jeff is also a published author, he literatlly wrote the book on iOS Game Development with Unity! He’ll be on hand to talk to you about his experiences in the mobile space, and answer any questions you may have for him! We’re really stoked to have him come talk!

After Jeff’s presentation we will go straight into our Open Floor!! We want to see what you’ve been working on! Summer tinkering, school projects, IGF submissions, we want to see them!!

We’ll also have some interesting games on hand that have come our recently to play through and demo!

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 19th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: UNITY! AS ONE STAND TOGETHER!

See you at the Garde
Rectangles

Hey Friends,

Super cool Jamie Woo, of Gamercamp fame, has an art show this weekend from Thursday night to Saturday.  This show is an examination of gender and queerness in videogames, there will be exbits and games to play. There is a focus on both the choices present in games as well as how those choices or lack of choices affect and reflect on the greater gamer culture.

Dance Central 2 will be there, and I intend to beat Jamie at it, he has me beat 2-1 so far. I can take ‘em!

http://forallgamerssake.com/

For a run down of all the exhibits and to use to figure out your way around,check out the Guidebook link:
http://m.guidebook.com/guide/3968/

Check out what he had to say about it:

Here are the details:

aaaand the facebook event with further details:
http://www.facebook.com/events/344371172313294/