Oh hi friends! Fancy meeting you here. Mayhaps we can interest you in a night of games and friendly shenanigans? We hope so!

This month our presenter will be local indie developer Philip Bemis who has been working on a quirky iOS maze game called Little Caves! A story about an ant who must save his Princess Luna Moth who’s been kidnapped by dastardly grasshoppers by finding your way through an abandoned ant hill!!

After Philip and Little Caves, we’ll open up the floor to you!! Got something you’ve been working on? Prototype? Finished gem? Jam game? Whatever!! We want to see it! Show it off in front of the group and get some feedback! It’s all in good fun.

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY MAY 16th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: AFTER PARTY TRAINING SESSION

See you at the Garde
Rectangles

Things kicked off with Dirty Rectangle’s own Justin Dempsy giving a pretty good run down of the state of the art of volume rendering. Showing off some rad demos he explained some of the issues with it, particularly the difficulties with animation.

Next up we opened the floor to a couple up and coming games.

First off,  Island of Lost Seasons, a neat Zelda-like from a couple of Dirty Rectangle regulars, Erica McCowan and Michelle Brodeur. It’s heartining to see a couple of First Year game development students go the extra bit and work on some indie games. Also check out their indiegogo page for a chance to help make sure this game gets out there!

Next up we had Jeremy Penner, of Glorious Trainwrecks and purveyor of all games wonderful awful, displaying his latest effort, featuring RnB singer R Kelly, in the refrain from his hiphopra “Trapped in the Closet”. As the player you need to ensure Mr. Kelly is able to swear in time for dramatic effect, the resulting game is hilarious in it’s absurdity.  CHECKIT

The bonus cool thing is game creation youtube overlay technology will be available for all to use in the future! Stay tuned.

Rounding out the open floor section of the evening is Bowman 3D. A project by second year game Algonquin game Developement students: Brendan Sheedy and Bruce Rick. Similar to Classic turn based ‘shoot the other dude’ games, this one has a sweet archer theme. They showed off their neat dynamic level generation and teleportin’ arrows.

We rounded out the night with what went down Molyjam style in Ottawa. There were about 12 Jammers at Various times, which resulted in 4 pr0jects.

First up, Derek showed off his game, What if Ghosts could Dream? Based off of the tweet “What if ghosts could dream?” A neat little point and click ish adventure game. It has some top notch sound design.

Next off my MolyJam Game, Reluctant Rambo, based off of the tweet:

“I wanted that Rambo license. My idea was that Rambo is dead, you control his ghost and must locate and hug every one of his victim’s ghosts”

It’s a side scrolling action game at the front end with a bit of a twist. It’s the best jam game I’ve made in my opinion. Check it out!

Next up Jonah Davidson, the internets’ “Hangedman” Showed off his game The Last Scarecrow, inspired by the tweet ”You are a scarecrow in a world with just 1 bird”. The game is a sprawling platformer with a clever ‘you can only move by jumping’ mechanic. The ending is particularly inspired.

Final local game to be shown off was This Game Always Tells the Truth by Jeremy Penner, the insparational tweet? This:

“What if a game were to lie to you? “Go through door A” says a wise old man. Then you open door A and there is a bear.”

And bears there were! It’s a funny quirky game about dissatisfaction over ‘victory’ and  painful repetition!

I think molyjam was a great success, it seemed like everyone involved treated the concept with the correct approach and everyone enjoyed the faux seriousness that everyone seemed to instill in their games.

Thanks to Superbrothers for livetweeting the event! See you folks next month.

Yeah, April is pretty busy. Students are graduating. Studios are hiring. And indies are jamming.

We ushered in April with fine friends this month at the What Would Molydeux event, a 48-hour worldwide game jam based on the tweets of Peter Molydeux. We made games. Allow us show you them. We’ll also try some of the other games made around the world, and talk shop about getting into jams.

Following the game jam post mortem, our own Justin Dempsey will be delivering what he considers to be a long overdue rant. Volume Rendering and You will look into the current indie trend of VOXELS, what they are, what they aren’t, and why most developers still get it wrong.

After Justin’s Rant we’ll open the floor to anyone that wants to show off anything they’ve been working on!! Games, art, music! Whatever! Come get some feedback!

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY APRIL 18th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: WE BE RAIN DANCIN’

This weekend we are teaming up with the Swell dudes  Artic Empire to put on the Ottawa edition of the ‘What would Molydeux?” Molyjam. For those of you who don’t spend most of your day on videogame blogs, this Jam is based off of the comedic twitter account, “Molydeux”, which used to be a parody of crazy claims Molyneux would make on stage about his games. Some of these ideas are terrible! Some are inspired! All are ripe for interesting games!

It starts at 7PM tommorrow(local) and runs until 7pm Sunday, there are Construct 2 codes to-give away(thanks Scirra) and Game-Salad webinars!

Bonus thanks to Organizers: Anna Kipnis, Patrick Klepik and Chris ‘Hot Scoops’ Remo

Our event

Official Site

Check it! (List of game ideas)

Currated selection from ‘MolyDeux’
The cool thing is Peter Molyneux is going to go to the London Location, I love when a plan comes together.

It’s March Mind Games this month over at the good old Avant Garde. Studio XX is going will be on hand to demo their new game. Vitality is a first person puzzler where you steer your character with a controller for use you MIND to manipulate objects in the game world! Too cool. You can read about this Mind Reading Controller they’re using over here.

After Studio XX we’ll go straight to our open floor. What have you been working on?! Let’s see it! We’ll have some cool indie games that just came out to play too!

Facebook event page

WHEN: WEDNESDAY MARCH 21th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: IT’S OKAY, WE BRAINWASHED YOU INTO COMING ALREADY.

Something magical is happening this weekend! Indies all across the world, you have been tasked with a CHALLENGE!

The monstrous machine that is Glorious Trainwrecks are putting together another Pirate Kart to bring with then down to GDC this year. The goal is try and create as many games as possible in a single weekend, compile them into a single playable “kart” and then ship it off to GDC to be shown and played on the show floor! The organizers have tasked indies with created 2012 games this weekend and…

THEY NEED YOUR HELP!!

And here’s how you can get involved… This Sunday from 12pm – 6pm, Ottawa indies will be gathering at Arctic Empire Studios to crank out as many games as we can in this short amount of time. We will also be live streaming the event onto the internet along with other indies in Toronto and Montreal. Also, there will be a documentary crew at the Toronto location filming about Game Jams, and they seem interested in a couple skype interviews on our end! Neat!

Facebook event – DIRTY RECTANGLES PRESENTS GLORIOUS TRAINWRECKS GDC PIRATE KART HOSTED BY ARCTIC EMPIRE!!

WHERE : ARCTIC EMPIRE, 235 ST PATRICK, in the Market
WHEN : Sunday 12PM – 6PM
WHY : INDIES HELPING INDIES!

February can be a damn cold month in Ottawa. What say we all get together and share a little body heat?

We got a pretty great Show and Tell lined up for you this month! Jeremy Penner of Glorious Trainwrecks will be on head to talk about the group and there Pirate Karts that have been all over the news. Rectangle, and playboy, Eric McQuiggan will be spending the first two hours of the meetup making a game in front of you! Also we’ll do a post mortem on last weekend Global Game Jam and play some games that came out of it. All of that AND this month marks our 1 year anniversay of doing these monthly Show and Tells! Woo!

Hit the jump for even more info about this months Show and Tell!!

WHEN: WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 15th, 8PM
WHERE: AVANT GARDE BAR (BACK ROOM) – 135 1/2 BESSERER St.
WHY: PIRATE KARTS!! GAME JAMS!! THE FUTURE IS NOW!!

You still here?
Okay, awesome.

So like I said, Eric is going to do a 2 hour jam at the beginning of the meetup with month. That’s an open invitation for any of you that want to join in on the jam with him! There’s be a 2 hour time limit, and the theme of the jam will be decided by the crowd at the beginning of the night. We’ll submit these games to the GDC Pirate Kart that Jeremy and Glorious Trainwrecks are putting together. That means you can have your 2 hour jam game playable on the show floor at GDC this year!! Who could say no!

See you at the Garde!
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!!

Going Loud Studios is an independent games studio founded and operated by Ben Kane. It was established in late 2010 in Ottawa, Canada shortly after Ben’s departure from industry to pursue a career in independent game development. The company’s first title, Zombie Accountant, was released in November 2010 for Windows Phone 7, followed shortly thereafter by a Xbox 360 release. The tongue-in-cheek title set the tone for Going Loud Studio’s light-hearted and addictive style. The next major release came in June 2011 with Lair of the Evildoer, an action RPG with twin-stick shooter vibe and roguelike twist. Going Loud’s third title, DLC Quest, is targeted for a November 2011 launch.

Want to get in touch with Ben? Send him an email: ben@goingloudstudios.com

Keep up with the latest news! Follow on Twitter @WeAreGoingLoud

See you at the Garde!
Rectangles