The moment you have all been waiting for is upon us: the launch of the Indie City Arcade cabinet at the Emporium Arcade Bar. We have been working tirelessly, painting, soldering, testing and loving this beast into a truly magnificent creature that we can’t wait to unleash to the world.

For those that have been living under a rock the Indie City Arcade cabinet is powered by pure indie dreams and love. We ran a game jam last month and were blown away by the variety and creativity of the games submitted.
http://sixpackgamejam.herokuapp.com/

These games will now be packaged up and made playable on the Arcade cabinet for all the fine folks at the Emporium Arcade Bar to enjoy. We can’t wait to get these games into the hands of players and hope you will join us for a night of intense celebration.

Check out all the event details on our facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/141434522689448/

Hello, everyone! We had a deliriously awesome meeting back in November, and are now back to ring in the new year.

You may have heard that we had a game jam over the past month–that ends today. Next Saturday, January 12th, we’ll be getting together and playing each others’ games from the jam! In addition, Kevin Geisler from the Octodad team will be doing a presentation on free production tools to use in game development. (Who doesn’t like free tools? No one, that’s who!)

When? 12:00 PM until we’re done (4 – 5PMish)
Where? 243 S. Wabash Ave. Room 924
Why? Because there are going to be lots of awesome games and stuff!

Come RSVP on Facebook and I’ll see you there! (Oh, and make sure to bring a laptop if you have a game jam game to show off.)

Until Saturday!

Over the past year or so various highly dedicated Indie City Games heroes here in Chicago have been working away at creating an arcade cabinet that we can call our own. We figured after housing the machine in Andy’s apartment for so long we should probably do something with it. All of that work is finally coming to fruition and by that I mean Rob Lach is finally just doing a large amount of the hardware based work for us because the rest of us are bad with physical construction. (Imagine four scrawny guys lugging around a heavy arcade cabinet. It happened.)

One cool thing about the Indie City Arcade cabinet is that we’re going to be housing it in multiple rad locations. In each place we put the cabinet we’ll also be looking to run a game jam around the theme of the location.

Recently Jake, Phil, and Devon visited Emporium Arcade Bar in Wicker Park. With a little luck and a lot of good looks they managed to snag the permission of owners Doug and Danny to put the cabinet in Emporium starting in January, 2013. So you can probably guess as to what the theme for the jam might be, drinking games! And so the ‘Six Pack Jam’ was born.

We’ll be holding the Indie City Games ‘Six Pack Jam’ December 6th through January 6th. After this time we’ll put all the games created during SPJ into the Indie City Arcade cabinet and then anyone at Emporium will be able to come by and check out the talent! If all goes well we’ll continue to do cool stuff like this. Exciting! And how!

To sign up for the jam go here and register!

http://sixpackgamejam.herokuapp.com/

We had a great meeting Saturday, and excellent turnout to boot! Thanks to everyone that showed up!

We had a great post-mortem panel covering Mega Ran with Jay Margalus, Polymer with Whittaker Trebella, and Organ Trail: Director’s Cut with Ryan Wiemeyer and Michael Block. Andy Saia gave us an exciting run-down on his awesome-looking StarlingPunk framework, and Phil Tibitoski told us all about the new developer feedback service ChiDevDate.

We then opened up the floor for game dev open mic, and got to see the following great-looking titles:

• Gerald Kelley – Jupiter Jerry’s Tour of the Kuiper Belt

• Blair Kuhlman and Amanda Dittani – Gone From an Age: A Fitting

• David Laskey et al. – Groovy Tuesday

• John Kinkley – Hannibal

• Bonus Stage Games – Skyhawks

• Sean Hogan and Jonathan Kittaka – Anodyne

• Toy Studio – Battle Off! In Spaaaace

• Young Horses – Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Thanks to everyone that came; I look forward to seeing you all at the next meeting!

My, how time flies. Has it really been that long since our last meeting? Well, let’s get to it, then: it’s time to find out what everyone has been up to, hear the hard-won lessons of developers who’ve recently released games, and learn about a neat new framework one of us has been developing!

1. Post-mortems! Specifically, of Polymer from Whitaker Trebella and Organ Trail from The Men Who Wear Many Hats. EDIT: Lunar Giant will be joining us as well to post-mortem Mega Ran!
2. Framework! Specifically, the StarlingPunk framework developed by our own Andy Saia for hardware-accelerated 2D games.
3. Open mic! Get up and show off your newest project (or, alternatively, show off new progress on an old project).
4. Also, Phil Tibitoski and Jake Elliot will talk about ChiDevDate, an ultralight matchmaking service for local developers to give each other feedback about projects.

The meeting begins at 1 PM and will last until 4:30 PM, but we’ll also be mingling and networking after the meeting, as per usual. To show off a game, make sure you bring your laptop. The meeting is at 243 S. Wabash on the 9th floor; RSVP on Facebook. We’ll see you there!

–Craig

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the meeting! We heard post-mortems on Telepath RPG: Servants of God and on the Octodad: Dadliest Catch Kickstarter campaign. Once that was done, we got to see the following games:

Boothill Heroes (Experimental Gamer)

Deer Creek Shootout (Vladr Games)

Fists of Oog (Team We’re Ok)

The Garden (David Laskey)

The Ocean Temple / Halo Physics Edition (Eric Smith)

The Smoker’s Game (Jacob Roff)

Telepath Tactics (Sinister Design)

Unity Pathfinding Demos (Andy Saia)

Finally, we wrapped up by raffling off a couple of copies of Unity Pro and opening up the floor for networking.

Patrik Spacek was good enough to film the proceedings–they’re on Youtube right here. As you can see, it was a great time. I look forward to seeing you all at the next meeting!

After a long winter hibernation, Indie City Games has woken back up and is ready for another meeting! Are you ready to hear about recent developments in the world of Chicago indies? Are you ready to show off your latest works? I know I am!

On the agenda:

- An update on the Indie City Games arcade cabinet from Andy;
- A Kickstarter post-mortem from Phil and Devon, in which they discuss what worked and what didn’t during their campaign to crowd-fund Octodad: Dadliest Catch;
- A post-mortem on Telepath RPG: Servants of God, which was released at long last this past month; and
- The customary open mic where anyone can (and should!) get up and show off their latest and greatest game projects.

To show off a game, make sure you bring your laptop. As usual, the meeting is at 243 S. Wabash on the 9th floor. The meeting starts at 1 PM; RSVP on Facebook. We’ll see you there!

–Craig

It’s that special time again, when Chicago’s indie developers gather together to show off their work. That’s right: it’s time for another Indie City Games meeting!

In addition to seeing the latest and greatest in Chicago indie game development, we’ll also get updates on the progress of the Indie City arcade cabinet and discuss other indie business.

As usual, the meeting will be taking place at 243 S. Wabash Ave Room 924. It will be from 1 – 4 PM, Saturday November 12th, 2011. Needless to say, if you want to show off your latest work, bring a laptop with a copy of the game on it. We’ll see you there!

–Craig

Greetings, indies and friends of indies!

In just two short weeks, Indie City Games is throwing an open-house games expo. Members of the general games-playing public are invited to show up, meet local indie developers, and play the games they’ve been hard at work creating. It’s fun, it’s free, and absolutely everyone is invited!

Here are the essential details:

Where? 243 S. Wabash Ave Room 924

When? 1 – 4 PM, Saturday August 20th, 2011

Why? Because you love indie games!

Indie developers looking to show off their games should show up with a laptop (or iPad, or smart phone) along with all needed peripherals. If you’re not a dev or you just want to come and play games, just show up with as many friends as you can round up. See you there!

–Craig

Hello Indie City!

I’m happy to announce we’re teaming up with the Chicago chapter of the IGDA to do a showcase event. It’ll be a great place to show off any games you may be working on. The showcase (which is also our next Indie City Games meetup) is on Saturday, May 28 from 12-3pm at the usual spot, 243 S. Wabash Ave, Room 924. This will be an awesome chance to meet with local developers who work in AAA games, Facebook games, or anything “not indie” I guess.

We’ll also be giving an update on our arcade cabinet, so come on out to have a say in what happens next. I really like the idea of having a game jam to create games for the cabinet. Speaking of which, it looks like Dude Icarus (which we made during the two-week jam in September) might get a new life as an iOS game.

Anyways, hope you can make it and keep on creating stuff.

-Erin

Saturday May 28, 2011
12-3pm
243 S. Wabash Ave Room 924