What do you call one of the top ten best games at EGX?! OFF GRID!

Yes, you read that right!  Off Grid snagged a pretty sweet accolade over the four days at EGX:  Eurogamer staff rated Off Grid as one of the top ten games on the show floor.  Read the article in full here.

Here’s the write up on Off Grid (complete with a pretty accurate description of Rich and his conversational skills!):

While that accolade was certainly the highlight of our EGX experience this year - plenty of other great things happened over the four days:

Off Grid’s Twitch Debut

Thursday kicked off with an interview and live play through of Off Grid on the Twitch Stage.  Rich talked to CaffCast and Spamfish in a livestream to over 2000 viewers - a first for both Rich and the game!  Watch it here.

We now have our own twitch channel - be sure to subscribe!  Rich took the opportunity to do some behind the scenes streaming while at EGX, so go have a gander at those if you’re interested.  In the future, we hope to use it to do playthroughs of Off Grid, talk in more depth about our development process, and perhaps about some of the inspiration and influences behind the the game itself.

The Geek Show

Pontus (not often seen on camera!) was interviewed by The Geek Show for their podcast and YouTube channel.  Get your glimpse of one of the powerhouses behind Off Grid here:

Friendly banter with the NCA

The National Crime Agency (NCA) had a stand at EGX and were handing out helpful information to all inquisitive passersby - including literature on the Computer Misuse Act and an NCA challenge.

Here’s a little closeup of their handout:

Big Red Barrel Duet with Yucatan Game

Fellow indie dev and Leftfield Collection exhibitor, Joe Bain, and Rich Metson were interviewed by the kind folks at Big Red Barrel.

They’ve put together a special EGX podcast, jam packed with all their favorite games.  Listen in at about 56 minutes for the very best bits! ;)

What else did we love about EGX?

You’re right, we already said the highlight was being picked as ONE OF THE TOP TEN GAMES OF THE SHOW!  :D  That’s totally true - it is awesome.

Off Grid was also highlighted in OuttaSite’s indie picks at EGX, and the VGChartz write up, Games to Watch Out for from EGX.

But what else did we love about EGX and our participation in Leftfield Collection?  Watching YOU play the game!

It’s always a treat to see how players make their way through the latest build - taking note what they find interesting and engaging, and what might be quickly passed over.

This year marked ten years of Leftfield at EGX - that’s ten years of showcasing great indie games alongside all the big hitters - thanks to David Hayward for all the effort supporting indie developers!

Morning Folks! Guess where we are today?!

If you have a ticket to Eurogamer over the next couple of days please swing by, say hello, and play the demo, we’d love to meet you!

http://www.eurogamerexpo.com/

Eurogamer Roundup:

Our first fully playable prototype for ‘Off Grid’ demoed at Eurogamer Expo in London last week, we met some amazing folks, had people write and tweet about us, and we managed to get the build into the hands of lots of kind and willing gamers!

It was great to hear what people thought, see them enjoying the gameplay, and take note of the things that will be our first port of call in the next development phase.

This last month has been particularly tough, with Pontus and I pushing ourselves to get the game from being a disparate set of systems and prototypes and into a single, functioning level, and so the last couple of days have been pretty damn good for rest and reflection.

Eurogamer was a great reminder of the big picture. I can safely say we couldn’t have asked for more at this stage in development. Highlights include Mike Bithell tweeting us; big name players visiting the stand to try out the game such as Henrique Oliviers from Bossa Studios, Ali from Puppy Games, and Leigh Alexander from Gamasutra, among many others; and finding out in the pub that a good few fellow developers and journalists we admire had already heard of us, including Simon Roth - developer of Maia, and Daniel Nye Griffiths, UK Editor of Wired. What more could you ask for?!

We’re going to be working hard over the next few weeks to implement changes inspired by all the great feedback we got. We’re also up at Gamecity Festival, Nottingham, at the end of the month. I’m going to be heading up a panel discussing ‘Thematic Risk’ in games (or the lack thereof) and we should hopefully have a couple of exciting guests to announce soon! If you’ll be there, drop us a line to let us know and come and get involved!

Thanks for a great Eurogamer to all those who visited us, and those who made it happen!

The Toy

After a dev miscommunication between Pontus and I over our desires for the turning and strafe functionality of the character, we decided to have a little character control revamp!

I know what you’re thinking, 6 weeks ‘til we demo at Eurogamer and I’m fiddling with the fundamentals, but the cold hard truth is that 'the Toy’ or feel is so important that I don’t think any time spent tweaking what will essentially be one of your player’s first impressions of the game, is any time wasted at all. You really can’t get this feature too right.

There is some great stuff out there on character controllers, but if you’re looking for Unity specific stuff, it doesn’t get much more thorough than this following set of videos by John McElmurray:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKFvhfT4QOqlEReJ2lSZJk_APVq5sxZ-x

If the man was still on twitter there would be a big shoutout going to him right about now! If you can hear me.. THANKS JOHN!!