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[fish]

gamma 256, i unveil thee!



Once again, kokoromi is teaming up with the Montreal International Game Summit and the Society for Arts and Technology to bring you gamma 256.

for those not familiar with the gamma concept, what we do is we send out a call for participations to be made around a certain theme. the games are then presented at this great big rocking party organized by MIGS, SAT and ourselves. the games are projected on giant screens all over the venue. as last year, the first half of the party is MIGS's closing party and is reserved for attendees, free beer and all that.
the 2nd half then opens up to anybody and stretches long into the night.

think of it as a curated art show/dance party/game jam.
it is NOT a competition.

this year's theme: resolution.
low resolutions. weird resolutions.

here are the official rules:

1. Your game's resolution absolutely may not exceed 256x256 pixels maximum.

2. Your game must run on Windows XP and use an xbox360 controller.


additional guidelines

1.Your game may use any kind of aspect ratio and be as low-res as you
want. (ex: 16x256, 64x8, 4x4)

2.Your game should remain simple, pick-up-and-play.

3.A single game session should not last more than 5 minutes.

4.Your game should not rely on audio of any kind (no sound will be fed out
of the game at the event).

5.Single-machine multiplayer is fine/great.

6.All games will remain the property of their respective creators.

7.Your game does not have to respect any kind of colors restriction, but it can.

this year's event will be held at the SAT, in Montreal, on November 28th.

you have until November 1st to send in your games.
an FTP server will be set up.



check out www.kokoromi.org for slightly more details.
check back often for more.

some footage from last year (totally dosent do it justice)




some gameplay footage (live!)




last year's games were presented at this year's experimental gameplay session, profiled on joystiq, gamesetwatch, and a whole bunch of local and canadian news outlets.

if you have any questions, email me at [email protected]

holy shit, 400th post!

[Alex May]

This sounds pretty fun! I bet you'll get loads of awesome entries edit: pieces If I have time I'll see what I can do

[waruwaru]

2. Your game must run on Windows XP and use an xbox360 controller.

sounds like the rules are designed with XNA projects in mind.

[Derek]

Sounds cool!  Mind if I frontpage?

[fish]

waruwaru: not at all. its just that on our end, we need to make sure that everything is playable, we justw ant to standardise a little.
last year was XP too, but we used ps2 controllers with one of those USB converters. this year we figured we'd just go with the 360 controller. i think its a great controller. you can use any technology you want. last there was stuff made with flash, processing, xna and some other stuff.

derek: not at all!

[fish]

actually derek, could you look in your yu.derek gmail account for an email from me?

cheerios.

[Guert]

Interesting... Gotta find me a 360 controller

[fish]

well, actually, as long as you make sure its playable with acontroller, 360 controllers are just what we'll use at the event.

[fish]

dereeeeeek.
check your mail, yo.

[gummikana]

I can't believe I missed this. This is great news.

Can I enter a game, even if I can't make it to Montreal? Free beer is a tempting offer, but I don't think quite balances off the travel costs.

I'm in, if it's ok. My pixel art is horrible, but I'll try to work something out.

[fish]

coming here is a plus, obviously, but its for you.
if you cant make it, its too bad, but yeah sure, submit away!
id love to see what you can come up with.

and if your pixel art sucks, just make something so low-res it wont show.

[Impossible]

Great idea and I can't wait to see what comes out of it. I've already written up a barebones simple game to see how low res I could go while still maintaining some semi-interesting gameplay.  You can find it here.  If I have time I'll either flesh out this idea more or work on a more fun (and slightly higher res ) game.  I'd love to go to Montreal, but unfortunately that's not gonna happen.