Highlights so far (in order of appearance)

+ Keita Takahashi acting like a naughty school kid by playing random videos of Boy George on the Jonathon Ross Show, an ice hockey game and someone cleaning a goldfish bowl at the end of the playground announcement (which reminded me of the Friend’s with You one from a few years back)

+ 3rd place in a Canabalt tournament (even if my score ‘1800′ was still a bit shameful) resulting in some nifty over-sized shirts.

+ “Find something that allows you to build a game over a weekend or you’ll loose your mind. If its taking you any longer then whatever you’re doing, its too complicated.” – Adam Atomic on rapid prototyping and the origins of Canabalt. (coincidently it was announced elsewhere in the universe that Unity’s indie level software is now FREE… but also worth noting that Adam’s Flixel is also open source and free too)

+ Adam Atomic then explaining how he created the sound effects for ‘running on a crane’ using his macbook, a saucepan and some sneakers whilst his wife was out of the house.

+ Lord Puttnam commenting on how the game industry needs to be lead by the creatives and not the technology, and how he sees this coming from the independent and bedroom coders.

Goodness me, October has been (and still is for another week) a ridiculously busy month for Game events. For me it started back on the 1st when I crossed the Atlantic to visit LA’s Indiecade and will end on Sunday at London’s Eurogamer Expo (passing through Gamecity and Playful along the way).

Indiecade was a great ‘first ever’ game festival experience. From being surrounded directly by the developers of the games the festival was celebrating, to engaging discussions focused on culture, art and innovation and hearing talks by personal favourites Keita Takahashi and Steph Thirion.

However being a game festival novice I do admit  I was quite the Norma no-mates for the duration, which is especially difficult when surrounded by a such a well connected community. Anyhew- my inability to socialise aside, the games that lay at the heart of the festival were an amazingly eclectic selection that reminded me yet again why I’m so fascinated by indie games ..and a particular nod to Peanut Gallery’s festival favourite Minor Battle that was an excellent mix of pervasive and virtual play. (n.b. a selection of Indiecade titles will also be showing at Game City Squared this week in Nottingham).

So onto the week ahead, and although its a shame that so many excellent game events are clashing, its not going to stop me doing my darnedest to take in as much as I can! I’ll report back with my findings later on, but in the meantime here is a rodeo round up of things I’m particularly excited about…

Gamecity: Something Splendid I have nnnnnooooo idea what this is going to entail, but doesn’t that make it all the much better? (this week’s LFF suprise film being the exception to that rule).

Gamecity: Curry Session- Adam Atomic, Making Canabalt The guy who made Canablat, talking about making Canabalt… with curry. Yeah!

Playful: A one day event about games and play in all their manifestations with an eclectic and exciting line up of speakers, summed up well by this tweet

Gamecity: Frozen Synapse Beat the Dev: The cleaner almost threw away their prize pot, but thankfully its still there to win if you can take on indie devs Mode 7 as they peview their upcoming release Frozen Synapse (I hear its like chess with guns- this is a good thing).

Eurogamer: Indie Games Arcade: If you’ve read this far down, you’ll know by now that I like indie games, so of course I would always be looking forward to more.

This week saw another fresh set of  indie game challenges cast upon a crowd of eager developers by the Experimental Gameplay Project and 2-Bee Games . And of course these two are not the only US based indie game projects which have popped up on my radar in the past year…

artxgame Attract Mode and Giant Robots collaboration that teams up artists & developers. Current projects include Jottobots a collaboration between  J.Otto Seibold and Kyle Pulver.

Gamma – Kokoromi’s annual contest, which last year ran with the too cool for school theme of stereoscope 3D giving birth to games such as Papermoon

Experimental Gameplay Project – a group of indie games developers running monthly competitions around a given theme (this month ‘bare minimum’), with the stipulations that they must be the work of one person and worked on for no longer than 7 days.

B2 (2Bee) And finally 2-Bee games who are running their second indie game competition – perhaps the most incentivised of all the offerings with a cash prize and ‘publishing deal’ for the winning game (which last time was the  visually and auditory stunning Auditorium)

So as I coo over these projects and their amazing output I’m always left wondering, why don’t I know of any thing similar based in the UK? Although there’s nothing preventing us Brits from taking part or engaging with most of those listed above, we still lack the fun and inspiring sense of community, collaboration and direct motivation that comes from events such as Kokoromi and artxgame.

And even with all the fluffy and loveliness of community aside these events have encouraged the creation of not only some amazing and well known games (some which have gone on to be fully developed), but they also form excellent PR platforms for the regions and developers involved.

So am I wrong, am I missing some amazing competition or event? The closest I can think of was the recent X48 challenge, or even at a stretch the pervasive games community brought together through Sandpit?  Or am I correct that there is a definite gap for a big monthly/bi-monthly indie game challenge and event- nothing big, just something lo-fi, fun and inspiring.

Well either way I’m not one to sit here and complain and wait for something to pull itself together, no I think its about time something needs to be done… hmmm where to start…