We’ll post a report with all the event pictures soon - though if you can’t wait, a few photos linked from the Facebook event page.  Much thanks for the first set of gallery pix goes to our Sexy Lab Assistant Team documentarian, Brooklynite Lauren Gardener!

For now, as promised, here is the epic chiptune mix that Damien made for the event!  We’ve listened to this thing about 17 times over the last three days, so we can fully attest to its durable chipaliciousness.  Have fun!

Future Boy - 8-bit Megamix

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If you want to add these events to your calendar on Facebook, jump from here to Live Game Sounds or Live Game Code.

And come back later for the pictures…

Up first:   your exclusive chance to play our red/blue stereoscopic headtracking cube fitting game from the retro-future: superHYPERCUBE

This is the first public showing of sHC since its debut at GAMMA 3D, and we’re psyched to help inagurate TAG’S Porous Lab. Musical tracks for your enjoyment will be provided by Montreal’s oblivionboy.

The vernissage is free, and the gallery open late tonight - from 6:30pm to 11.  Porous Lab is on the 2nd floor of the Ecole Bourget, just above Laika 2.0 — where you can grab a drink.

Come see some art, have a beer, chill on our couches, and enjoy some stereoscopic headtracking goodness.

• What:  superHYPERCUBE at Porous Lab, BNL MTL Opening Night
• Who: Kokoromi, oblivionboy, YOU
• Where: École Bourget 1230, rue de la Montagne
  Guy-Concordia or Peel
• When: Friday, May 1, 6:30pm to 11pm
• How much: $FREE

We’ve got two IGS sessions on our speaker docket, both on Tuesday:  at 10:30, Phil is sharing a podium with 2D Boy’s Kyle Gabler to talk about about indie game promotion.  Then at 11:45, Phil has pulled together a start-studded line up of indie gamers to rant for 5 minutes each on a topic of their choice. Phil and Heather are both ranting about something, as are Kellee Santiago, Erin Robinson, Chris Lobay, Mark Johns, Raigan Burns, Michael Samyn, Petri Purho, Mare Sheppard, and Steve Swink.

Come say hi.

My team started as a triumvirate of Petri Purho, Cactus, and myself, but through the process of creative mitosis this team became two: Kloonigames (Petri, Heather, and Cactus) and Cactus+friends (Cactus, Heather, and Petri).

And so it was that, 48 hours later, were born our games 4′33″ of Uniqueness (NGJ award for innovation) and gaba aba (NGJ award for graphics), as well as Jonas, Joel, and Martin’s In One Piece (NGJ Audience Award), and the adorable game that Kian, Erik and Bernie made, but haven’t uploaded yet (I can’t remember what they decided to call it).  Plus there were a bunch of other games made by awesome Scandinavians and their friends.  Check out especially Make My Head Grow which was the far-and-away winner in the brand-new “bring from home” category at NGJ, where teams were allowed to form before the event, and bring assets with them.  Which means those aren’t exactly jam games, but some were awesome anyways.

Thanks to Nordic Game Jam and the folks at the Center for Computer Games Research at IT University Copenhagen for having me out, and thanks to the NMS guys for a great time!

And thanks to Martin for the nice photos!

“What is Polytron and what is happening to Fez?!”, i can hear you scream at the internet. Well, it’s simple. Fez needed a company to handle all the business surrounding it’s publication, and Kokoromi didnt want to become one just for that. So Polytron took over, while KKRM remains it’s good old free-form, not for profit self.

From now on, all Fez updates will be posted on the corporate blog.

Based on the submitted games, our answer could be “yes, but extremely rarely, and only with carefully controlled and limited visuals.”   Namely, of the games we received, only The Depths To Which I Sink was impossible to play without the anaglyphic red-cyan glasses.   Depths strips away all other depth-of-scene cues, like scale, horizon, and parallax, and disguises the anaglyphic color palette in simple non-representational graphics.  In other words, if you don’t wear the 3D glasses, the rectangular game world of Depths is completely flat.

But stereoscopic design techniques are deeply dependent on the specific hardware and software used to deliver the illusion, which means each is unlikely to become widespread.  The gameplay innovation of each would be limited to that particular interface, and even then, there doesn’t seem to be much that can’t also be done by other means.  Other stereoscopic technologies that feature more discreet perceptive separation between the two “eyes” might offer a few unique opportunities, which we hope to see when that technology becomes more accessible to experimenters.

In general, stereoscopy seems primarily a way to interest and immerse players visually and sensorially, rather than create any revolutions in gameplay.   But we invite you to prove us wrong on that one.  In the meantime, it’s definitely a way to get a room full of our favorite people to put on wicked cool cardboard glasses.

Photo:  Simon Law - Some rights reserved.