Party!

The annual picnic at Richard Garriot's place was a blast. Tons of stuff to do. Great BBQ, Ice Cream, drinks, events, and live music courtesy of the Captains of the Chess Team.

Scare for a Cure

A new tradition has begun. For the second year in a row, Tandem Games has donated to a local breast cancer charity named Scare for a Cure (scareforacure.org). This year Natasha led the way by revealing her true cyborg innards while Aaron continued with the 'stick wound' theme.

Aaron, Troupe, Drew and Fernando will be at the GDC. If you want to meet up, drop me an email: aaron@tandemgames.com

Wow - what a great time! The Independent Game Conference was great...I highly recommend it to any Indies out there. I did a couple of interviews for the local news and Tivo.

I met a ton of great people. The guys from Perfect Dork Studios in Austin have a great looking game coming up called Box Macabre. If you like Metroid and Castlevania, you will love this game, coming to XNA next year. They also have a couple of sweet iPhone games in the works. Keep an eye out for these guys...they're going to hit hard and fast next year. Here is the Box trailer:

I also got to meet a couple of the guys from Try Catch Games from Minnesota. They were awesome and are going to do some neat stuff with Flash.

The conference sessions were relevant and it is so nice to know that the Indie scene is thriving and consists of a bunch of nice people who care about making fun games.

I'm hoping to be able to help out with WIGI this year. They have a great cause, and this industry needs more influential women working in it.

-Aaron

We had a blast at the Austin GDC this year. Here is a shot of Aaron and Jon at the VMC Game Labs booth, with voice actress (and good friend) DB Cooper.

We've been keeping it a secret for some time now, it is finally time to start releasing some details on our next game.

Domain of Heroes is a new browser-based RPG. It doesn't require Flash, or any other plugins to run.

-Aaron

We’re back in sunny, alternately hot and cold Austin once again, having happily wrapped up our trip to San Francisco with a three hour game design session on the flight, followed by a two hour game design session at Saltgrass Steakhouse. It’s amazing what a ribeye slathered in garlic butter can do for one’s creative processes.

The show was great, and Crunch Time did its job admirably. The guys and gals from VMC Game Labs were very happy with the turnout they got at their booth, and with the game in general. There was a steady stream of people checking out the VMC area, and it was fairly rewarding to see.

We hung out once again with Billy and Matt from Critical Mass, and walked the Expo floor with the Fatman (sorry George: you suck at Guitar Hero ;_; ). We bumped into Mark Chuberka and Steve Farrer, who we had met at the IGC, and I think Aaron ran into Quoc Tran at one point. A friend of mine happened to be at the Expo with her classmates from The Guildhall, and we hung out with some friends of mine and Troupe’s from IMVU (where old VERGE coders flock). I don’t think I’ve ever run into as many familiar faces in a one week period as I did at GDC.

Between networking, checking out the show, and talking endless game design, we did some relaxation. We had an expensive (but well worth it) feast at the House of Prime Rib, caught the Video Games Live concert, saw Jumper and Be Kind, Rewind, and caught a crazy tech demo from Recombinant Media Labs courtesy of Naut Humon.

Last week was equal parts exhausting and relaxing, but it was a nice inspiring refresher. We’re winding up to get back into full swing. Stay tuned!

— Jon