Catching Up

It has been over nine months since the last post was published on Thumbstruck! As my excuse, here's a quick update on what I've accomplished in nine months:

• Completed 14 more games, including Rayman Origins, Pushmo, and The Walking Dead (all highly recommended). This brings my grand total to 42 games completed since I started tracking them (September 2010).
• I proposed to the woman of my dreams, and against all odds, she said yes. We our planning our wedding and getting married later this year.
• I helped launch a lot of new stuff at work. If you own a Windows 8 computer/tablet, there's a decent chance there's a game on your computer with my name in the credits. Hooray!
• I helped run a game with Arkadium at the Come Out and Play festival on Governor's Island. The game is called Super Secret Spies, and despite the sneakiness, there are tons of photos online.
• I attended Practice, a game design conference hosted by NYU Game Center, and heard talks from some truly remarkable people. No single event has reinvigorated my resolve to create great games more than this conference. If you're interested in hearing about any of the talks, let me know!
• Got my first smartphone! I am now the proud owner of a Nexus 4 running the latest version of Android, which also means I have new free-to-play games to try out. My commute is Triple Town, and Triple Town is my commute.
• I returned to TCNJ for the Global Game Jam 2013. With my good friends (and dream team) Bryan Mayer, Ryan Epp, Chris Hallberg, and Nicole Pieri, I built _scope, a psychadelic game of Set-meets-Spirographs, with just a hint of childbirth. For real.
• My writing has appeared around the net a bit recently, including this opinion piece on iMedia Connection about the then-new Facebook App Center.
• I wrote a  feature story on Gamasutra covering five tips for better playtesting. This was recently re-published in the March issue of Game Developer Magazine, which was distributed to subscribers and at GDC. Let me know what you think!

And that's it! If you're interested in chatting about some months-old news, I'm happy to take a trip down memory lane. Leave a comment!

(Thanks to Vinny for pushing me to start writing again.)

Philly Game Jam victory once again for TCNJ alumni and students!

Two weeks ago, on the weekend of July 15-17, a team of TCNJ alumni, students, and friends took home two awards at the 2012 Philly Game Jam, part of the Too Many Games festival at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center.

The Philly Game Jam is a 48-hour game development competition in which teams of professional, hobbyist, and student game developers compete to build a game with very little time (and even less sleep). All teams are given a theme at the start - an image, quote, or idea to help prompt their creativity - and then they have only their own equipment, skills, and resources to complete a working prototype of a game idea before the weekend is over.


A team of five game developers organized by TCNJ alum Alexander Cap took home two awards: "Judges' Choice" and "Most Innovative", for their game Kairos. Alex was joined by fellow alumni Brett Taylor and Nathan Wailes, TCNJ student Martin Bayer, and friend of the group Arnab Jahangir.

Kairos is a platforming game with puzzles that let the player age (and take years off) their environment in order to reach their goal.

This year marked the third Philly Game Jam in a row that the TCNJ game development community has participated in, starting with the event in Fall 2009 and continuing again at the last event in Summer 2011. Since the tradition began, TCNJ's game development community has continued to grow - in April 2010 the school's first game design club in many years, The Magic Circle, began holding meetings. In January 2011 the group organized a student/alumni trip to the NJIT Global Game Jam site, and in January 2012 The Magic Circle organized a public Global Game Jam site at The College of New Jersey.


This post is my sincere congratulations to the team for not only pooling their talents to create an impressive game, but for strengthening the spirit of community among TCNJ students and alum interested in game design and development. Go Team Kairos! See you at the next Game Jam!


If you are interested in playing Kairos or learning more about the team, please check out the Kairos wiki page.