TT Games own Jonathan Smith presented how the Lego platformer series of games they’ve made came about. He explained about appealing to people who don’t like Star Wars for instance, and gave some detail on how the games were developed.

Sadly, the session “I was there…. DMA” was cancelled (due to the presenter Brian breaking his nose). This along with the other two “From the Desk Of” sessions sadly 🙁

Media Molecule did the “GameCity Vision Statement supported by BAFTA”, and provided information on how the game was made, who made it, the changes during the game development – I also got the presenter Alex Evans to initial my Sackboy, and autograph my book. I do want to play the game, it would be real great to try it sometime despite my lack of proficiency with platformers.

I also got Alex the presenter to autograph my Sackboy model, and he also showed off four interesting videos I got a chance to record some of, the first being prototype footage of “brainfluff”, ie; Little Big Planet and what they showed Phil Harrison to get Sony on board. The second shows their prototyping method to get the team working together – showing the way 2d and 3d can be combined. The third and fourth interesting ones showed the “focus” of the game (made up to keep the team on track on what they were doing), and the last video was what they’ll show at their Christmas party, a short run of clips from their development. Really cool stuff 😀 I should have asked if I could have got any of them for the Internet Archive…damn.

I visited Indiecade through gaps in the day, and got a talk through of Where Is My Heart which looks like the finished game could be a nifty platformer. I played through . I saw levelHead – the physical blocks with a camera, it’s an interesting use of a camera. Democracy 2 was taking me ages to start, but I get it’s simulation aspect, and looks pretty in depth. I played through Ruckblende (Flashback), which aesthetically was amazing, being a paper-built world to do the point and click adventure, and hand drawn animations to portray moving things. I also saw Machinarium being shown off again 🙂

I also recorded one of the more interesting games, Dark Room Sex Game. I’ll let you view the video, since it’s quite hard to describe. Additional info though; yes, you can be male on male, or female on female. It is hard (I didn’t try it myself however) and obviously, the noise your controller makes is the other person’s response 😉

Lastly was the Guardian GamesBlog Quiz, and the closing party. We didn’t win the quiz (tough competition I’ll say!) but the last round we did the most spectacular entry out of the lot. The party was okay, if a little empty – some free drinks (which lasted me the night), and a great “30 player game on a projector” setup was crazy. The first band, PowerPlay, were loud. Very loud. They also did a lot of Megaman, sadly (since I find the games’ themes all a bit repetitive). Press Play On Tape were more varied, and had some great songs during the night, but also were a bit loud (although more quiet then the others).

Some more pictures are available in my gallery too. My autograph book got a few more signatures, although I missed the bands’ – but all in all a fun day.