Guildford Games Festival

Hi everyone! Today's post is all about the Guildford Games Festival that took place on Friday and Saturday last week. I was there with the University for the Creative Arts to showcase Squillamorph for both days. It was a great little event!

Here's a photo of all of us from the UCA games arts incubator studio at the event. From left to right; Alessio (MediaShake), myself, Andy Bossom (Games Arts Course Leader), and Alessio and Maciej (MediaShake). Hmm, am I seeing double? Photo credit: Tony Mayor (Games Arts 3D Tutor)

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Day 1 - BUGS

The first day started really well. There wasn't much traffic getting to the venue, which was a pleasant surprise. Setting up the stands went smoothly and I was raring to go. As we had some time, Alessio played the game as he hadn't for a while. Unfortunately, he discovered the first major bug of the day; one of the vents which transport the player around had not been setup properly and the player would get stuck in it, requiring them to return to the menu. I then discovered that one of the other vents in the same level didn't work at all, which is less important but no less irritating. Then I found out the boss completely skips its first stage. Another player discovered that if you die while entering a vent, you will re-spawn within the vent as if nothing had happened. Needless to say that this day did not go so well on the gameplay front. Almost every player found a bug or an issue of some sort. Nevertheless, it was good to discover the bugs and I did get some decent feedback.

Contrary to the morning, traffic home was really bad. Eventually, I got home and after a bit of respite I got round to bug fixing. I managed to fix all the main bugs and I added a few visual elements to help guide players through the game. I was much happier about showing the game the next day after doing this.

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Day 2 - HEAT

Soon after arriving at the venue on the Saturday, I realised how much hotter it was going to be. The event was open to the public today, while yesterday was just for the industry. The changes I made to the game seemed to be improving player experiences and I was getting lots of great feedback. Things were going much better than the bug-filled shenanigans yesterday. The only issue that became really prevalent, as the sun started to shine through the roof of the venue, was the heat. On the first day we had a slight breeze passing through the building but today it was nonexistent. Being in the UK, we don't typically need or have air-con, so the building became extremely stuffy. Despite the heat, it was a good day and I got lots of valuable feedback. If you came by the stand, thank you for dropping by and I hope you enjoyed the show!

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I know there wasn't as much new content as usual but most of last week was spent preparing for the event. This week is my last week in the incubator studio, so I'll talk about my experience there in the next post along with the usual content updates! Thanks for reading!