Congratulations to Game Club alumni Daniel Steger for the release of Baby Maker Extreme

April 21, 2010 in Archived Posts, Club Member Spotlight

Congratulations go out to fellow Game Club alumni Daniel Steger, at Stegersaurus.com, who has recently released his newest game, Baby Maker Extreme, onto the Indie Games section of the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. I heard about this game when I met with Daniel at The Hand Eye Society’s social event last Thursday, and after gettting more information about this game online, I knew that I just had to post this article up and tell everyone about it.

If you haven’t played Baby Maker Extreme yet, then you owe it to yourself to at least download the free demo, if you have yourself an Xbox, or watch the gameplay videos on IGN. I can certainly say that is a type of game you don’t get to see everyday, and all I know is that Baby Maker Extreme made me laugh.

Baby Maker Extreme - Trial Run Video

"Trial Run" video

Baby Maker Extreme - The Long Haul Video

"The Long Haul" video

It’s only 80 Microsoft Points (eqivalent to approximately $1) to buy the full version of the game, and that’s probably part of the reason why Baby Maker Extreme is currently the #1 best selling indie game on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace as of the time of this writing.

I guess it must be obvious that Mr. Steger knows a thing or two about making babies. Well done, Mr. Steger. Well done, indeed.

NOTE: If you are a UTGDDC member or alumni and you have a game that you’d like to let me know about, then please send me an email at admin@utgddc.com and I’ll see if I can put up a feature for your game onto the Game Club’s website.

There are two new threads in the Forums that are ready for discussion

April 19, 2010 in Archived Posts, Game Club Announcements

Just a reminder to all of you that the there are two new topics in the General forum that I’d like to get input on from Game Club members and alumni.

First, there are some plans in the works for a club get-together at some point during this summer. The purpose of this event will be to hang out, give an opportunity for new members to meet alumni of the club, and for everyone to basically get re-acquainted again. Some UTGDDC alumni have already began discussing plans for this event in the “It’s been a long time” topic, so get on there and let people know whether you’d be interested in meeting up and when you’d like to do this.

Second, I thought I might expand the About Us section of the website since the Game Club has lately began to garner more attention from the Toronto video game development scene and the U of T Computer Science Department. Unfortunately, I was not actually a game club member until several years ago, so if any of you know some details about how the club was founded and how it was run in the past, please post these up to the “Please help me form the history of the UTGDDC” topic in the General forum. Periodically, I’ll be posting what I’ve written so far, and it would be great to get feedback on it to ensure that my information is accurate and appropriate for the website’s new About Us section.

And lastly, if you’ve previously tried to sign up for an account on the UTGDDC Forums, but were unsuccessful, that’s because the Forums were not actually working properly at that time. Fortunately, UTGDDC alumni Thuan has recently fixed this problem. So, you’ll now find that when you register for a new Forums account, everything will be working fine, and you’ll be able to receive your account and start posting to the Forums right away. Thanks for the help, Thuan.

The top overall game submissions for the 2010 Game-Making Deathmatch

April 16, 2010 in Archived Posts, GMD

The Theme for GMD 2K10:

Among a variety of very interesting games and concepts, the winners of the 2010 Game-Making Deathmatch were chosen by a panel of judges. This year’s theme was “Nightmare Fuel” and the contestants had a little bit over a month’s time to develop their games. Here are are the official results for the best games of the competition overall:


Nitro Marie


DOWNLOAD LINK COMING SOON

Nightmare Fuel


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Nightmare Fuel

Darkest Before The Dawn


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Darkest Before The Dawn

Lively Bitter Garden


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Lively Bitter Garden

Text Zombies


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Text Zombies

Desert Madness


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD Desert Madness

Darwinian Fight Club


NO VIDEO GAME DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE

Screenshots and gameplay videos for these games will be posted at a later date.

Come out on Thursday, April 15 for a great night of fun and premier video game demonstrations!

April 14, 2010 in Archived Posts, Events

The Hand Eye Society, which is a rapidly increasing collective of Toronto game developers, will be having another one of their special social events on the evening of Thursday, April 15 at the Unit Bar located at 1198 Queen West in downtown Toronto. Doors open for the social at 7:00p.m., and presentations will begin at 8:00p.m. There will be two major presentations at this particular event.

Jim McGinley will be premiering a new type of game that is exclusively designed for a club environment. Everyone at the Unit Bar will play this game together, and it should be a very interesting gameplay experiment to take part in. Also adding to the fun will be the first live demonstration of Benjamin Rivers’ new interactive drinking game, Drunken Rampage.

On top of all of that, you get to hang out with other cool developers from the Toronto video game industry. It certainly sounds like there will be lots of things to do and lots of people to see at this event, so hopefully we’ll see you there.  For more information, you can check out The Hand Eye Society’s homepage.

If you want to develop games, sign up for TO Jam now!

April 14, 2010 in Archived Posts, Events

Just a reminder to everyone that the registration for this year’s TO Jam is currently open, so now is your chance to sign up for this FREE event before registration closes on Sunday, April 18.

In case you don’t already know, TO Jam is an event that takes place each year in Toronto where game developers from all disciplines (art, programming, design, music, etc.) come together over the course of 3 days to develop their own indie games. The games being developed are usually based on a given event theme, but you don’t have to follow this theme if you don’t want to. The main objective behind TO Jam is to get game developers from all levels of ability to kick-start the development of their own unique games for the sake of having fun and learning from others. TO Jam is not a competion, and teams helping each other out is encouraged. In fact, if you decide to sign up for TO Jam without a team, you can participate as a “floater”, who is someone that gets to work with all of the groups at the event to produce game content for whatever they may need help with. You may also be pleasantly surprised at who decides to participate in TO Jam, as this event has attracted big names in the indie video games industry on several occasions. This is a great event to attend for anyone who is interested in designing and creating video games.

If you’re interested in signing up for TO Jam, or just want some more information, have a look at the TO Jam website.

UTGDDC executive member election results for the upcoming 2010/2011 school year

April 13, 2010 in Archived Posts, Game Club Announcements

The elected UTGDDC executive members for the 2010/2011 school year are:

President:
Francesco C.

Vice President:
Gabriel N.

GMD Administrator:
Shane Z.

Website Administrator:
Chris A.

General Administrator:
Simon C.

Congratulations to the newly elected executive members, thank you to everyone who decided to run, and thank you to everyone who voted.  It was a very competitive election this time (there were 6 people running for General Administrator for goodness sake!).  It was amazing.

Here’s to another great year for the UTGDDC!

Help develop an indie game this summer

April 5, 2010 in Archived Posts, Help Wanted

Just because the Game Club is done for this school year doesn’t mean that you have to stop making games! Fellow Game Club member Leiz, who is one half of the team that won this year’s Game-Making Deathmatch, is looking to form a group of individuals who would be interested in developing an indie game over this summer on a part-time basis. The game’s development will be done as a team effort of people with different skills such as artists, coders, musicians, and others. The team may meet up about once a month to discuss the game’s development and also to hang out. It’s most likely that the indie game to be developed will be a Flash Facebook game, since these technologies are relatively easy to learn and easy to deploy games with. If any of this sounds like something that you’d like to participate in for this summer, then join the “utgddc summer 2010 indy game” Facebook group at:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=105768612789510

More information about the development of this game will be available for members of this Facebook group.