Last night I headed to the GAMMA 3D party, hosted by Kokoromi as a sort of afterparty for the Montreal International Game Summit. Loud music, video games, 3D glasses, overpriced beer– what’s not to like? I ran into Matthew of The Quixotic Engineer and we hung out and checked out the games. While I barely got any playtime (I was more into just watching– a line of people watching me is too much pressure!), I still got some good views of the crazy games on display, and met a few new people to boot!

AltiToad – Tim Winsky and Johanna Arcand

I didn’t spend much time looking at AltiToad, as it didn’t immediately grab me when watching it, and I had to leave before i got a good chance to really give it time. However, it looked pretty neat form the small amount I saw. You play as a frog in a top-down perspective and must jump from platform to platform, hopping sometimes on clouds (I didn’t see what this does– I think there is a collecion mechanic). I’ll save my report on this game until I can actually play it when they release the games for download. Finding anything about this game or the folks who made it was difficult, too– guys, you’re on the international stage now! Don’t make me Google your names to find links! ;)

BlottoBrace – Antony Blackett, Corie Geerders, and James Everett

This is the first game I settled down and started watching, although I didn’t get a crack at it (most of the games, actually, I preferred to just watch, and never actually played). From what I could tell, you manipulate a paintbrush falling into an abyss, and draw gestures made of paint to combat evil unfilled boxes that are flying at you due to your endless tumble into the abyss. As much as that sounds like i’m making fun, I’m really not; this game looked like a lot of fun. However, most people playing it were doing pretty miserably. I don’t know if this was due to the amount of beer being consumed, or if the controls were a little twitchy, or if they were just hard to get used to (sometimes people would lose, and the game would say “GAME OVER” with “DON’T PANIC!” superimposed– I suppose the game wants less extreme attacks on the analog stick?)

The Depths To Which I Sink – Jim McGinley

Ahh, Sink. This was probably my favourite submission to watch at the entire game. Everything about this game really screamed at me, and if you can get ahold of a pair of 3D glasses and a wired Xbox controller you ABSOLUTELY must check this game out. You control a purple dot that moves in three dimensions and leaves a beautiful purple-fading-to-white tail. Your objective is to crash into things that look like windows, and avoid things that don’t look like windows. I can’t really do it justice; you need to download it and play it. A wonderful little game experience, especially when something changes, the game simply says “Rise” and the tail on your purple dot gets incredibly long, and essentially allows you to start making three-dimensional brush strokes. It’s better than real life and I LOVE it.

Fireflies – Lee Byron and Joannie Wu

This is the only game I managed to play, because the line strangely dissipated just as I walked over to watch it for a second time. Your objective is, ostensibly, to use a jar to capture fireflies while walking around in a dark, tree-filled field. The art, particularly the background tree silhouettes, are incredibly cool-looking; the game controls very weirdly, though, like a twitchy Katamari with the triggers needing to be held to keep the jar closed. I hope to play it a bit more, but this game was especially fun to watch someone good play; the controls just weren’t meshing with my blobby fingers.

Paper Moon – Infinite Ammo with Adam Saltsman

Paper Moon looked fabulous. The art reminded me of a friendlier Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, and the gameplay appeared to be a puzzly 2.5D platformer that summoned memories of Braid, recent DS Castlevania games and . The 3D glasses were vital: being able to see whether or not a platform you were about to jump on was far enough out to actually stand on put a nice wrinkle into the platform-y goodness, and having blocks violently jut out at you added a weird spookiness. I can’t imagine this game was originally made for this contest, though; it seemed far too polished to have been made in the small amount of time since it began. If it was done in that amount of time, well, my faith in the ability of a small, agile game dev team has increased tenfold. Stunning, stunning work.

super HYPERCUBE – Kokoromi/Polytron

The piece de resistance of the whole night, Hypercube was playing front and centre. The concept is simple: you get a complex cube-built behemoth, and a wall with a hole in it. You need to find a way to rotate the cube to enter the hole. Aside from the crazy 3d effects, one thing stuck out above all else: the integration of text-based information. There are multipliers in this game, but the words are floating in the game world instead of being displayed in a hud. Similarly, the number of blocks in your current objective is displayed in the background, near the wall you’re attempting to put it through. I only wish that they had done this with ALL of the information on screen instead of only those two things; the time remaining and current score were static in the top right and left corners, respectively. The whole thing reminded me of the kind of stuff that’d be in an Underworld or Mouse on Mars music video, which is a very good thing.

There was also some Virtual Boy stuff going on. I didn’t see what was happening there, but I’d love to hear, if anyone out there knows.

I can’t wait until the next GAMMA event! Hopefully CIKRO has their crap together by then to put a submission in!