The Game Engine

With another Ludum Dare just passed, and game jams becoming more and more popular as a way for game developers of all skills to work on new original games, its high time we discussed the lovely jam of games. Join us as John and Andrew discuss tips and tricks weve learned from many mistakes and successes weve had in working in game jams. As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Mythbusters proved to us all that you can indeed polish a turd, but just because its shiny doesnt mean it works. With just two of the regulars, Andrew bittman Bittman and John gritfish Kane, we discuss the purpose and definition of polish and how it compares to the concept of juice. Particularly we have a lot of reference to Mike Bithells (from Thomas Was Alone fame) talk on polish which you can find here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022080/Indie-Polish-Making-the-Most As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Great apologies oh great listeners! We have been super out of it last few weeks for various reasons. Hopefully this post is a sign to return to our regular schedule. In this episode, we are joined by special guest Dan Graf, a regular from season 1, ex-Halfbrick designer and newly independent developer. He brings forward the topic of Conveyance - what techniques and ways can we inform a player about how the game works. As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Another week, and another guest with a return of health meaning we get our first 4 person podcast of season 2! This week we are joined by Dylan Bevis from Featherweight Games to discuss their recent release of Skiing Yeti Mountain with a variety of topics including amount of content, advertising strategy, narrative, conceptualisation and charity. Links to topics discussed in the episode: Haven Expo - Videogame and Pop Culture Expo where John exhibited last week. Featherweight Games - Our guests game development company. As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Another week, another format. This week, weve got guest Kim Brebach of Secret Base Games in to chat about his game Monstrous, a card game which you can find on Kickstarter right now! Along the way, we chat about the design process, names and how to use Monstrous in a post title. You can find it at monstrousgame.com. As always, wed love to hear your thoughts on the episode. Send them our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

This week, we do something a little different: each of the Game Engine hosts challenge the other two to a design challenge. The result: surprisingly deep discussions of 3 very different aspects of game design. Some references, made without context: The Wattam trailer from E3 The volunteers dilemma Our listener question for this weeks topic is also a design challenge: How would you make Portal into a competitive multiplayer game? Send answers and, as always, your feedback, questions or topic ideas, our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Space. The final frontier. This is not that sort of space. Rather, it is the construction of space we deal with in physical and digital form. Architecture looks at designing and constructing physical structures; a quite similar concept to games actually whilst additionally factoring majorly into Level Design. For Episode 2 of Season 2, Andrew Bittman, Paul Sztajer + John Kane discuss the topic of Architecture in another of our test formats: the topic-format. Following are links to some of the topics that were highlighted in discussion: Sunset by Tale of Tales - digital architecture creating a believable space. Laser Harp at Vivid Sydney - concerns and understanding of physical space. 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - an easy-read introduction to architecture. Our listener question for this weeks topic is: What games demonstrate amazing architecture and why? Send answers and, as always, your feedback, questions or topic ideas, our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Were back again, and about time too. And this time - its season 2! Season 2 delivers fresher voices and minds of old hats Paul Sztajer and Andrew Bittman, as well as new voice and new mind John Kane. Hiatus explanations notwithstanding, Episode 1 of Season 2 is one of a few format/style trials well be exploring at the early stage of our return. As a news focused episode, Episode 1 discusses: First and foremost, where have we been!? The difficulty and risks of trying to work on a unique idea (What to do when youre blindsided) John compares his game Mallow Drops to Zukis Quest. Testing for Mobile Development, and branding developers (Play Store to add Developer Pages, A/B app listings, and more) Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear. Its been a long time, but wed love to hear your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can throw our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

Paul and Andrew are joined by the creators of local iPad hit Towncraft for an in-depth discussion of its origins, development and marketing. Two years ago, brothers Rohan and Leigh Harris set out to build a tablet game that harked back to the isometric wonders of the early 90s. Recently, they hit number two in the Australian iPad charts. What manner of journey filled the space in between? What was easy? What was hard? And can you truly make money on iOS without microtransactions? Listen, and ye shall be informed. Bonus topic: the great Steam Greenlighting, and the implications thereof. Wherein Rohan says exactly what Saul would have said if he was there, except much more eloquently. As always, thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear. Send questions and topic ideas to us via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

For their discussion of two of the most interesting games of the year thus far - Papers Please and Gone Home - Saul, Paul and Andrew are joined by the enigmatic Tim Stobo (formally of Team Bondi and now of hard-to-articulate indie studio Quests End Games). Both games share a focus on minutiae and involve lots of reading, but what is it that makes each of them a uniquely special experience? Is Papers Please fun, or an interesting-but-tedious chore? Does Gone Home break if you go off the beaten path? All this and more examined in anxious detail in this weeks episode. Our bonus topic this time around is GoGs answer to Steam Greenlight - an indie-publishing service that makes up for in interesting promises what it lacks in catchy names (it doesnt appear to have one at all). As always, thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear. Send questions and topic ideas to us via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

Has there ever been a more tempestuous relationship than that between a creator and his or her publisher? Saul, Paul and Andrew sit down opposite Travis Plane of Surprise Attack Games*, Australias first independent publisher. By the end, our intrepid hosts have discovered that publishing has many facets and comes in many flavours (like a gemstone carved from ice-cream), and Travis has renounced the word publisher forever. This weeks bonus is a discussion of Saints Row IVs $1 million Super Dangerous Wad Wad Edition (yes, its really called that), which bleeds into a discussion of special editions generally - the pros, the cons, the bling. And guess what? Were pretty sure that this weeks episode has no major audio problems. Hazzah! (Let us know if were wrong, of course.) As always, thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear. Send questions and topic ideas to us via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. *Full Disclosure: Surprise Attack Games are publishing SeeThrough Studios next game, Particulars.

Episode 58 sees Saul, Paul and Andrew discussing the rash of fancy new peripherals and other gadgets that seem to be getting everyone hot and bothered lately. Oculus Rift, Google Glass, Ouya, and on and on. Tech was a big part of last years Kickstarter explosion, and now were starting to see some of the results. Is the return of VR the future of games? Or is it just a gimmick (again)? Musings on these questions and many others await those bold enough to travel with us to the space year 2013. (Because its the future, Saul sounds like a robot when he laughs. Either that, or there was something wrong with his mic set-up. Again.) Our bonus story today is a discussion of Everquest Next, the next Everquest game. Can it possibly live up to its own revolutionary hype? (Probably not, but we live in hope.) Thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear! As always, were looking for topics and questions, which you can communicate to us via Facebook, Twitter, and email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

The Game Engine Podcast returns! After a seven-month hiatus, we bring you Episode 57, presented by SeeThrough Studios. In this weeks episode: Saul, Paul and Andrew discuss what theyve been up to over the break, then focus in on PAX Australia (and the experience of being a convention exhibitor generally), before finally touching on ... that Phil Fish thing. Thanks to Studio Ripple for our new intro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear! As always, were looking for topics and questions, which you can communicate to us via Facebook, Twitter, and email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

As you may have noticed, the Game Engine Podcast has gone quiet for a while. Weve stopped recording for various reasons, but are looking at some options for continuing the podcast. In the meantime, weve got 3 episodes and some iFest interviews that we never got around to posting (these episodes are at least 2 months old). In this episode, Saul and Paul go all introspective, as we discuss a process for discovering the core of a project that wed recently undergone for our Flatland project*. Along the way, we discuss the Second Project Effect as well. *Note that shortly after this recording, we realised that the backlash of the Second Project Effect meant that wed lost too much momentum to make a proper go at building Flatland. We subsequently split the team in two to build completely new projects as a palette cleanser, which has been fairly successful. Were still wanting to come back to Flatland at some point, but were unsure as to when exactly this will happen. Regardless, I (Paul) feel that the exercise we describe here was well worth it and well worth posting. Thanks to Jack Gillespie for cleaning up the audio as much as possible (sorry for recording on a dodgy voice recorder!).

In Episode 55 of the Game Engine Podcast we discuss Studio Culture with the regular crowd of Andrew Bittman, Saul Alexander, Paul Sztajer and Dan Graf. You can, as always, contact us through email, Twitter, Facebook or Google+. This episode can be found here (of course!), as well as via the RSS Feed or iTunes (we would love more ratings and reviews!). If there’s somewhere you can’t find us but wish you could, let us know. Super apologies for late post! We record them on time! We just suck at this posting! Also sorry if recording is a bit funny, we didnt get an audio clean this week unfortunately. Again apologies for being late! Weve all caught up now though. Again, apologies for being late. Were hoping to catch up this week.