AdventureX 2011
Alasdair Beckett-King (Nelly Cootalot 2)
I’d only played Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! briefly before real life interrupted and forced me to abandon playing it at the time, but I remember being pleasantly surprised by the excellent quality and unique art style. When the game’s developer Alasdair Beckett-King took to the stage, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect; with his long red hair and beard, he’s a striking individual that’s hard to miss. Alasdair started off with some amusing anecdotes about what he’s been doing over the last few years, a little about how his living standards and lifestyle have massively decreased after becoming a freeware developer and student (even using a graph to illustrate) and how the original Nelly Cootalot character was loosely based on his girlfriend (now fiancée), who also happened to be sitting in audience.
Expecting the conversation to turn in the direction of how the game was designed and offering tips to other developers in the audience, instead Alasdair opened with a quick demonstration of his next game already in development, Nelly Cootalot 2. Unlike his previous game, the sequel will be a commercial release and has been worked on extensively. This time around, he is moving away from 2D sprites and incorporating 3D cel-shaded player models against highly detailed cartoon backgrounds. Quite a few of the scenes already show a considerable amount of interactivity, and combined with Alasdair’s quirky humour, this could very well be a unique indie hit when it’s done.
Other Things of Note
Before proceedings came to a close, the audience was presented with a special recording from Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw, who currently works on an internet show each week called Zero Punctuation. Yahtzee is a notable indie developer himself, having created several popular freeware titles over the years, most notably the Rob Blanc trilogy and the Chzo Mythos series. Displaying much of Yahtzee’s unique brand of humour, there were three major themes in his speech, the first being a principal he referred to as the “Use Key in Door” puzzle concept (i.e. using an item to affect another object, whatever those may be, in order to overcome obstacles) and how almost all adventure games ultimately come back to this particular type of design. The second theme was a little history of the adventure gaming landscape in a rather ad hoc fashion, before moving onto the convergence of mainstream gaming with adventure games and how they are taking form in both the mainstream and indie marketplaces in present day.
There were more than 25 games and demos on display, and nowhere near enough time to try them all out. Apart from those that have already been mentioned and a few that have since been released (and will get more AG coverage shortly), some of the games that really stood out to me included:
City – Ben304
Doc Apocalypse – Midian Design
Entrapment – Lightbulb Games
Kinky Island – Screen7 (AO 18+)
Timeless Journey – repulazido
AUTOMATICITY – by Matthew Frith, Drew Wellman & Nick Tringali (no link currently available)
There’s no disrespect meant to any of the games not listed here, as I simply didn’t have time for all of them, so you should check out the full list of the games on show.
Final Thoughts
Seeing that this was a first attempt at organising an expo, I thought I might throw in some ideas as to what could have been done a little better. One is the variety of developers attending the event; this was a rather AGS-focused crowd, and the event should try to be as inclusive as possible, making an effort to get more commercial developers on board, people using different development kits such as Wintermute Engine and Lassie Adventure Studio and more industry luminaries if they’re willing to attend (though apparently I missed Discworld Noir‘s Chris Batemen on the first day). Another suggestion would be to organise a better venue in a more central location, perhaps even getting some sponsorship to help pay for the next one and an event co-ordinator to smooth over the presentation and work on little things like layout and refreshments.
Of course, a new start-up of any endeavour is always going to experience its growing pains, and the most important first step in making this event a success was simply taking it. The rest will come from experience and exposure, and hopefully this will indeed become a go-to event in years to come. Even with its humble beginnings, the AdventureX expo was a great day out, and its lack of polish in places was easily made up for by the wealth of indie talent and the interesting games on display. Let’s hope there are many more yet to come!
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