Before starting Blink, we had almost no background in making games. Blink was our first real project.

We worked on Blink for 3 and ½ years before we finally released it in March 2017. I was working on Blink in my free time for most of my time in college.

It’s a really boring story. Way back in 10th grade I was taking a written final exam for gym class (I’m not sure why there was a written final in gym). We had three hours to finish the exam while sitting isolated on the basketball court. But I finished in about 30 minutes and had the rest of the time to lay on the hardwood floor in complete boredom.But I found a way to entertain myself. If I stared at the bright ceiling lights and closed my eyes, I realized you could still see the shape of the light in negative colors. I’m sure you’ve stared at the sun before(though I don’t recommend it) and could still see an afterimage if you closed your eyes. Since I had nothing better to do, I began creating shapes in my eye by repeatedly exposing my eye to the ceiling lights. Then I realized there is a whole lot of stuff you can still see when your eyes are closed like background pattern and little “squiggles” that seem alive. It was like a faint world that existed inside my head because of some glitch in our brains. Soon after, I realized you could base a game mechanic after this phenomenon.

We used Adobe Flash Professional and Photoshop. Blink was originally supposed to be a small online Flash game we would finish in 2 months, but we kept on adding to it for years until it was a complete commercial game. I wouldn’t recommend Flash because it can be slow compared to Unity, but it works just fine for 2D games. Blink runs in a standalone launcher so it won’t be affected by web browsers dropping Flash plugin support.

My previous games before Blink were much much smaller in comparison. They took a few minutes to beat, while Blink takes a few hours.

Our goal is to create games that push the medium forward, or at least let players experience something completely new, be it a crazy new game mechanic or a hand drawn world. Deep down though, we just want to make games that we are proud of.

We’re really proud that we were selected! I’ve never been anywhere in Asia before, and being selected for SOWN is the best possible excuse to finally visit Japan! I’m really excited!

子供の頃に親戚からもらったファミコンがあまりに衝撃的でした。小学生の次点でゲームクリエイターになるとずっと決めていました。

休み休み作っていたので9ヶ月ほどかかっています。集中してやれば1～2ヶ月で作れたのだと思います。

まったく関係ない作業をやっている最中、ふと月がぐるぐる回りながら隕石を撃墜していく場面が脳裏によぎりました。その瞬間にどういうゲームにするか9割くらい確定していました。

GameMaker:Studio

設定のユニークさ、というのはかなり大きい気がしました。設定を人に話すだけで食いつきが大きい。ゲームのルールや駆け引きは実際に遊んでやりこまないと理解できませんが、その以前の段階でのヒキというのはやはり重要かな、と。

ゲーム沢山つくりたいですね。

ファイナリストに選ばれたことにかなり驚いています。プログラミングも絵もかなりつたなく、クオリティが高いとも言えないゲームですが、それでも選ばれたのはアイデアの良さだったのだろうと分析しており、技術力がない人にもワンチャンあるかもと夢を与えられたらいいなと思います。

大学在学中に卒業制作としてゲームを作りはじめました。それからゲーム会社に就職し5年半ほど働き、昨年末、本作のコンシューマ機展開を機に独立しました。

制作開始は2012年中ごろ、その年の年末には体験版などの発表はしています。それから働く傍ら余暇の時間に細々と手を加え続け、昨年末のWiiU版からフルタイムで制作しています。

SFアニメ・ゲーム、水族館の魚の群れ、ドキュメンタリー番組での生き物の戦い、玄界灘でのシュノーケリング、これらが脳内で化学反応を起こし、思いつきました。

ゲームエンジンはUnityです。CGツールはMetasequoiaやBlenderなど。

学生時代にカニやエビが戦う対戦シューティングゲームを作ったのですが、そのコンセプトを継承しつつ、魚類の導入による三次元的な遊泳やオープンワールドなレベルなど、より水中環境を自由に楽しめるゲームになりました。

さらに独自性の高いゲームの制作とそれを続けるための環境づくりです。ゲーム会社をやめてしまったので、どう生きるか模索中です。

所謂バカゲーと片づけられても仕方のない見た目で同人ゲーム出身の本作が選ばれたのは大変驚いております(もちろん本人は大真面目に作っていますが)。可能性は常に開かれているということで、今後もいつSOWNに選ばれてもいいような尖ったゲームを作っていきたいと思います。

Co-Founder of Broken Rules, established in 2009. Lead Artist and Creative Director of Old Man's Journey.

18 months - Full Time Development started in November 2015, the game was released in May 2017

Most of our games start with the mechanics. Old Man's Journey wasn't any different. We wanted to create something for touch devices and did a few brainstorming sessions that focused on what could work on those displays. Nothing specific emerged from these sessions but some ideas lingered on. One evening our project director and lead designer Felix saw a photograph at a friends place. It showed rolling hills fading into the distance and the idea of shaping those hills with your fingertip struck him. The photograph evoked a strong feeling of wanderlust and he saw a character that walk on these silhouettes into the distance.He brought the idea to me and we decided to build an experience that we both can connect to emotionally, a game that means something to us on a personal level. Since 2009 Broken Rules has produced four games and in that same timeframe we collectively had eight children. Balancing family life and the passion for creating our own games was an important topic for all of us over the past years. It was one of the major influences when we decided to focus on a character that struggled with these issues and is driven forward by a need to finally reconcile with his family.

Unity as the main development tool alongside a myriad of other tools to support the development (Trello, Slack, Adobe Suite, Git, XCode, etc.)

With Old Man's Journey we set out to do something very specific: to tell a personal story in a way that lets as many players as possible connect with it on an emotional level, no matter their background. We aligned all aspects of the game to support this idea which makes Old Man's Journey the most focused game we ever created.

I want to create experiences that are as much playful as they are meaningful. I want to connect with players through the game and pass on something of value to me as well as the audience.

It has always been one of our dreams to attend TGS and be part of SOWN. I'm exceptionally excited and proud to have the opportunity to present the game to you personally. Let's have some fun!

I'm co-founder of Undercoders, a small independent studio founded in 2006 in Barcelona, where I've been working as a game designer, producer and artist for the past years.

We spent around eight months developing Conga Master.

We developed the initial prototype for the Ludum Dare Game Jam 34, in which contestants could choose between two themes: "two button game" and "growing". We decided to use both concepts. The conga theme was introduced when thinking of a fun activity of our real life, that required growing to achieve success. A simple concept, easy to start but very hard to keep up with he momentum! That principle was converted into the main mechanic of the game.

We developed the game using Unity as a game engine and Gimp, Aseprite and Audacity as image and audio editors.

This game was mainly focused on delivering a fun local multiplayer experience, which was something we hadn't explored in previous games. Also, this was our first game developed using a 3rd party game engine (Unity), since we used our own game engine before.

My goal as a game developer is to deliver games which can result in a different and engaging experience for players, where humor and fun are the key factors.

We're very excited about this opportunity. As long time video game players, we feel honored and excited to be able to present our game in such an important venue as the Tokyo Game Show.

We've been playing games of all sorts for a fair bit and it was only after we graduated university that we went "hey, let's make a game together." We both studied illustration and Davison started making a game for their final year project, and with that knowledge we thought it might be interesting to collaborate on something. It started off as a passion project which grew into something much bigger than we expected.

Approximately 2 years including hiatuses.

As stated above we wanted to collaborate on something after graduating university, and we came up with the idea of making something small about the flat that we loved dearly and were about to move out of. As the story expanded we thought it would be interesting to make the game semi-autobiographical to tackle issues we're dealing it such as gender identity issues, mental illness, housing crisis, visa statuses etc.

We use Unity to build the game and Blender for 3D modelling.

We've only ever made small vignettes of similar visual styles, but 29 is much more experimental compared to everything we've made so far. We've only ever worked as a pair but for this project we have a couple of people on board making us a team of 5.

Our goal is to make game development diverse. We don't see enough minorities in the video game field on a world wide scale. Davison and I are both gender non-conforming and we would like to see more people like us being represented. We aim to make our games inclusive of all gender and race, and normalise the marginalised. We also aim to make games more accessible to people who aren't well versed in video games and let people realise that they are like any other art form. In order to achieve that goal we are heavily focusing on narrative design; building environments and characters around stories rather than putting mechanics first. For this particular game we have stripped it of puzzles and tactical thinking, allowing players to make choices at their own pace with no unforgiving consequences.

We're always very excited to be nominated for anything as it's still a very foreign feeling. It's always encouraging to know that people are interested in things we are passionate about making. We're incredibly excited to have been selected as finalists, and we hope that people enjoy what we're working on.

子供の頃からビデオゲームと図工が好きでしたので、その延長でやらせて頂いております。

約４カ月ほどです。

何かインパクトのあるコントローラーのゲームを作りたいと思っていた矢先、たまたま自宅でシャンプーボトルを見たので思いつきました。

Ｃ＋＋で、普通のソースコードエディタを使用しています。

このゲーム専用のコントローラーも一緒に開発しているところです。遊べる機会は限られますが、その場でしか体験できないものになっています。

このゲームで収入を得ることです。

このような機会を頂きまして大変感謝しております。皆さまに喜んで頂けるような内容になるよう、努力いたします。プレゼンテーションを見て頂いたあとは、是非ブースまで足をお運び頂けますと幸いです。

中学生の時に「STG-CIRCLE」というシューティングゲームを作るiアプリでゲームを作った事をきっかけに、もっと自分の創作したキャラクターを自由に動かしたいと思い、iアプリのゲーム開発を始めました。

約2年

身近にある物を題材にしようと考え「電話」をテーマにしたゲームを作ってみたら面白いのではないかと思いました。ワールドが電話番号によって自動生成されるというアイディアは夜に存在する「怪しい電話番号」や「都市伝説」から思いつきました。

LÖVE2D（現在はUnityに移植中）

今まで作ってきたゲームは既に存在するテンプレートのようなゲームの形に自分の絵を乗せただけでしたが、今回プレゼンしたStrangeTelephoneは誰も作ったことがない新しい物を生み出すことを目的として作りました。

プレーヤーの意見を取り入れつつ自身が作りたいゲームを作り続け、生きていくことです。

この度は多くの参加者の中からファイナリストに選んでいただき、大変光栄に思います。今回のゲームは自身にとって初めての大きなタイトルで特に思い入れもあり、リリース時は不安で仕方がなかったです。そして、こういう場に立たせていただけるのは、ずっと応援してくれているプレーヤーの皆さんのお陰です。本当にありがとうございます。短い時間ではありますが、このゲームについて余すこと無くお話させていただきたいと思います。