It’s here, it’s fresh, it’s shiny and it’s got the swag, and it’s pumping out it’s ovaries.

Left and right arrow keys to move
Z to jump
X to shoot

E to exit to world map
R to reset the level

It’s my game at long last! Actually, scratch that: it’s only been a month since I started work on this guys! You’re pretty spoiled getting to play this so soon.

[Edit - 10/10: For a little more context, for the uninitiated, this game was built, by me, inspired by but in no way affiliated with, Kreayshawn. This game was an exercise in learning game design for the Difference Engine Initiative, a new, six-week workshop program run by the Hand Eye Society here in Toronto. The DEI is a program dedicated to encouraging women to get involved in indie game design, in part of a larger movement to help more under-represented groups to have their voices heard in the game design industry.

The game was put together singlehandedly over the course of only about 4 weeks, built using the Stencyl tool for Flash game design. This is my first and so far only experience in game design, behaviours and programming.]

I really hope you like it, or at very least are amused by it.

If you still don’t know who Kreayshawn is, by the way, you should watch her video for “Gucci Gucci” (although, fair warning, you will NOT be able to get it out of your head for about a month afterwards).

So, in the couple months since my last post, I have become an indie video game developer with quite the buzz in the local industry surrounding my (soon to be released) first game.

I know what you’re thinking:

What?

Because I am thinking it myself.

How did this happen?

I’ve long had a interest in video games, but in recent years they have evolved into a truely transformative medium which allows for artfully rendered graphics, engaging story telling, and deep immersion via gameplay. It is an art form with potential, like no other.

So, a couple months ago, I applied to and got into the first edition of a Video Game making workshop, and met a group of amazing, life-changing friends.

The program is called the Difference Engine Initiative, and its aim was diversity in the Video Game Industry by way of getting women involved and integrated into the sausage party that is games. It proposed to do that by turning a small group of six women into indie game devs by helping us make our own, very first video games.

But what happened in between the game making was just as important as the game making itself.

What happened in between the game making, was that we discussed all the crappy ways we’ve been held at arms length from the industry and art form we all love.

And that galvaninized us:

To make our games awesome.

To continue making awesome games.

To talk about women in gaming (loudly).

To bring everyone we can in on the conversation.

To change things from the inside.

The reaction from the industry, from the tight knit Toronto based indie gaming community we are now a part of has been, absotutely ASTOUNDING. We have been embraced, and nobody really even knows what our games look like yet.

That, as you can imagine, is a lot of pressure.

But we are nothing, if not up to the task.

So in the next couple weeks, you’ll start learning more about what my game looks like, and what my new friends and I have planned for the future. Which is looking awful bright and shiny, if I do say so myself.

If you want to come see (and possibly play!) my game (and the games of my friends) in person, you should come out to the Hand Eye Society Social at the Gladstone on October third. You will not regret it, I promise you.