I met a friend out here in LA who constantly tweeted about something called Indiecade. Curious, I went to investigate, and discovered a “free” (depending on what you wanted to do) convention all about Indie games!

Indiecade invaders!

I was quite excited to go and I was not disappointed. It was basically a huge group of nerds nerding out on games. I played amazing video games like Fez, Pewpewpewpew, and Joust, watched a demo of the Kissing Console, and (possibly my favorite part) played a slew of real-world games with a bunch of strangers.

Another great adventure was witnessing Iron Gamer. It is set up like Iron Chef, with teams and a secret ingredient. The theme of the game was picked by the audience, and the design teams had to create a game out of the secret ingredient with that team. This year, the theme was “The Amish,” and the secret ingredient was bananas. Let me tell you, I will be:

1. Saying Barnana for the rest of my life,
2. Discussing the great rivalry between the Quakers and Amish,
3. Trying to convince my friends to play the white team’s game with me.

Also fun was that I met both Richard of the pink team (of Uncharted fame) and Rob of the blue team beforehand, so I actually got to watch people I knew compete in this crazy contest. Sadly, I didn’t know anyone on the winning team: white. Their game involved escaping the village to eat a banana. Good times.

Barnana!

Other highlights included learning how to play Ninja, Werewolf and that bucket game.

What I learned from Indiecade

• Real game developers should be able to create fun GAMES. This creativity will cross over into video games.
• Developers lead hard lives.
• I missed playing games (not just video games…like freeze tag, or hide and seek)