As a brand new rerring-to-go game developer, TigerFace Games leapt at the opportunity to show Equator and Smash Party at the Dare Indie Festival in Dundee this past weekend! Taking place alongside Dare Protoplay, smack bang in the middle of the city, the Indie Fest was a chance for teams like us to show off what we were making – all alongside the games created by university students during Dare To Be Digital.
But woah there! There’s more dares here than on the average playground. Just what’s going on?
At the root of this past weekend’s event is Dare To Be Digital. Dare is a competition set up by the University of Abertay Dundee designed to promote and stimulate generations of game developers. Each team is given 9 weeks from June to August to create a solid prototype of a working game, and then each game is shown off at an event called Dare ProtoPlay. The winner receives a cash prize and a BAFTA award nomination!
Alongside ProtoPlay, 2012′s Dare event featured an Indie Showcase for teams just like us. We headed up there from Friday to Sunday with iPads, monitors and bags and bags of sweets – and the great news is that gamers of all ages have fallen head-over-heels in love!
Equator went down a storm with kids aged about 6 and up, and it didn’t take long to explain how the game worked. After a few minutes of questions, they were on their way to maths enlightenment! It even took some nice asking to get the iPads back with some of the more engrossed players. One duo of boys sat for 25 minutes playing through the game in order to save up enough leaves for just one hat – which means, I think, that we’re onto something.
MORE: Read more about the leaves system in Equator!
When our humble booth got that little bit busier, we pulled out Smash Party to include as many people as possible. Kids of 4- 5 and up went crazy for the celebrations in between questions on maths and spelling, with one group of girls announcing that they were going to keep playing so they could pop more balloons. Frankly, we couldn’t have asked for a better response!
We had a great time showing our games off at the Dare Indie Fest – and to all of our new friends and fans who stopped by to check out our games and chat about what we do, whether young, old or in the middle, thank you!
You can read more about the winners of Dare 2010 at Scottish Games.