Week 3- Tranzfuser and Manchester

So we can officially publicly announce that we are one of the 23 selected teams participating in Tranzfuser this year. We are very excited to continue to work with the Tranzfuser team, other teams and we are looking forward to showcasing our game Ascend at EGX in September- make sure you come and see us there!

TALK Tranzfuser

This week we took a team trip to Media City in Manchester. Everyone piled into my tiny three door Peugeot 207, much to the joy of Andrew, Dec and Adam who had to cram into the backseats in 28°C heat and off we went.

5 developers, 1 cramped car

The reason for the visit was to attend the TALK Tanzfuser event; to meet the other teams and pitch our game idea and team to the official competition judges and get inspired by some guest speakers.
The day was kicked off by an introductory speech by Deborah Farley, Tranzfuser's head of Talent and Outreach who warmly welcomed all of the teams to the event and gave some insight into the day's activities. We then got some insight into larger scale indie development with a talk by Eddie Bearsmore of Coatsink, who talked about his successes regarding working with the early version of the Oculus Rift to create the game Esper, which then lead onto more opportunities to create new games. Also mentioned was Coatsink's new title, Augmented Empire (for which he had a really cool t-shirt with the art and logo), which is currently in development.

Tom Hughes of Cold Sun Studios, one of Tranzfuser's selected teams last year came down to give us all some advice and talk about his company's future development. Their new IP 'Life', a narrative driven game about a girl who can both give and take life really piqued our interest, and I am personally really looking forward to seeing them continue to grow as a company. He also gave some vital advice regarding EGX and general team related top-tips to help improve work life for a small studio.

Pitching

So after the morning fun was all over, it was time to get serious. We were divided into smaller groups of teams, with us being the first to pitch out of our group. We had to stand up four times throughout the day and present ourselves as a team and our game Ascend to 11 judges, and these are all people who have built a name for themselves in the industry, and are due the respect they deserve. I cannot tell you how nerve wracking it is to have to stand up and talk to some of the people you recognise and respect! 

We had some amazing teams in our group with us, to name them all we were with Pocket Sized Hands, Fox Byte Games, Filthy Fresh Studios, Giant Games and Gebba Games. Everyone else's games sound so fun and we cannot wait to play them at EGX (however I get severely motion sick when I play VR games, heartbreaking I know, so if any of you read this, get me a chair and a bin and I'll still give it a go) 

While we only had 3 minutes to pitch and then 2 minutes for the judges to ask us questions, we got some very good feedback and I believe that we answered the questions we got asked efficiently. It makes me very happy to say that the judges seemed to get what we were going for with our game, especially when we mentioned inspirations such as Journey. I also managed to not brain fart and forget what I was meant to be talking about- which is always good!

The Forgers away from the Forge, at Media City UK

Wrapping up

Towards the end of the day, we were able to have a Q&A session with Deborah, and Colin Macdonlad from Channel 4 games wrapped up the day with a talk about his experience regarding games and encouraged us to think outside the box- to roughly quote 'does it matter if your game is truly a game and may be more of an experience if people will still buy it?'. I found this really inspirational, with us doing a very story driven game, and it gave me extra confidence in our game Ascend.

Continuing at the Forge

Being an indie company isn't all about trips to Manchester and game conferences, so we've still been hard at work on Ascend this week!

Joel, our 'sound guy' maestro came to visit us on Thursday, and giving him the opportunity to play the game and meet the team gave him inspiration to write our games soundtrack- he's currently working away on creating us a beautiful OST right now, which is really exciting.

Andrew has been working on procedural materials for the level to add more variation to the textures, shown here on this image. Look at the variations between the rocks! 

 

Everyone on the team has been continuing to knock tasks off our product backlog, so I leave you with some new in engine shots of Ascend in its current state. Slowly getting there!