By kicking off the registration phase for Indie Game Expo at QUO VADIS 2018, organizer Aruba Events extends a long-standing tradition; up to 60 selected indie studios have the opportunity to present their works at their own booth.
QUO VADIS 2018 – The Indie Game Expo
QUO VADIS 2018, Europe’s longest standing developer conference enables aspiring studios to present their viral hits of tomorrow to an expert audience.
Meet The Speakers
Up to 60 indie developers will be selected and can choose between three packages. All three comprise a booth with furnishings, include wide-coverage media presence for the first time, as well as a contingent for the matchmaking platform MeetToMatch and more.
In time for the Indie Game Expo registration kick-off, the website received a redesign to give a better overview of the conference’s many attractions. The improved appearance offers a more engaging interface for the confirmed speakers and bundles all details about schedules, event location, offers into an inviting package.
For example, ordering a Business Pass before Tuesday, March 6th 7 p.m GMT, secures the buyer a Conference Pass for free. This and more offers are available here.
QUO VADIS, the longest standing developer conference in Europe, awaits the gaming scene on April 24th and 25th this year at Station in Berlin.
When Starsceptre originally released it was to introduce a retro shmup with a new kind of control – Tilt ‘n’ Shmup. What I realized early on was not many people liked tilt, favouring touch instead.
Starsceptre 2.0 Update
The more I looked into it, the more I realized I needed to rework the game to give the ship the freedom of the whole screen that gamers were yearning for.
As a result, I redesigned, not just the controls, but the powerups too because when the ship moved around its rear became unprotected.
Backwards canons and beams meant destruction happens behind you now as well as in front.
One of the secret features, built-in from day one, was a hidden code screen, accessible from a flashing star on the main menu screen. Clicking that took you through to an 8Bit controller whereby you could try out a 10-digit code to see what you could unlock.
Retro gamers who knew the original Konami Code unlocked some additional weapons to start the game better off. And if you don’t know the Konami code, here it is:
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A then Start.
But I also used this mechanic to unlock players for the game who had supported us since day one. Gamers, reviewers and game devs were selected to become unlockable Avatars on the home screen using a unique Konami-type code.
Getting Starsceptre to launch and now to redesign has taken 2 and a half years of coding in my spare time on my commute to and from work. Coding on the iPad meant I could code and test straight away without needing to sit down at a computer. It’s been this approach that led me to make my dream of finally making a shmup that people could play. I hope you enjoy playing the updated game available on iOS now!
Richard Morgan
8Bit Magic Games
Starsceptre is currently at its lowest price of £0.49 GBP/$0.99 USD/€0.49 EUROs/¥1 CNY until the 7th March.
Hello everyone, my name is Beewito (Nate) and I’m a gaming YouTuber. I like to think that I bring a very distinct quality to playing video games, so let me explain.
Around the time I was 2 years old the Nintendo 64 had just come out. Obviously, I hadn’t known this at the time, but I knew someone who did… That person was my older brother, he was 8 at the time, and had received an N64 for his birthday. For a while, being a 2-year-old, I didn’t understand the concept of video games at all. That is until the day I became a ‘gamer’.
“Ever since I could remember, I have been a Nintendo enthusiast. Nintendo was the first to grab my heart for video games in general.”
One day my brother was at school and I was bored of playing with my action figures and messing around with paper. You know, kids stuff. I noticed the N64 across the hallway in my brother’s room, just sitting there being unplayed… Inevitably, being the toddler I was, I got curious because it wasn’t something I’d seen before, and mainly, because I thought it was a toy. So I walked over to it, feeling and holding the actual console for a bit, feeling some of the games. I almost lost interest until I saw a little switch on the top front of the console, I decided to push it up, and voila this is where it began (the TV was on already and the controllers were already plugged in). Super Smash Bros. was in the console, and that’s the game that came up on the TV. I distinctly remember jumping up and down with excitement!
“That first match I played against the CPU Yoshi… I, of course, lost against him – practice makes perfect!”
At the time, figuring out something like this was amazing to me. Anyways, before touching anything I watched the opening intro/cutscene of the game, with my mouth wide open, stunned with amazement. After the cutscene was over, I picked up the controller and pressed one of the buttons to start the game.
The Upside Down
After some general “being confused” time, messing around with modes, and playing with the menus, I had, outstandingly, started an actual match. So the match begins, I was Mario, and I had chosen a Lvl. 3 Yoshi as a CPU. We were fighting on the Hyrule Castle stage. Since it was my first time playing any sort of video game in my life, I obviously didn’t know how to hold the controller to play. In fact, the only way I was able to start the game was by pressing random buttons and holding the controller by the tip of my fingers.
After turning the controller all which ways and trying to hold it in different positions, I had finally found a semi-comfortable way to hold the controller, which was, believe it or not, UPSIDE DOWN!
Fast forward: this became the normal way for me to hold the controller – to this day. It’s not just THIS specific controller either. I also hold the GameCube controller upside down too, which is what you see in my video. The video goes in-depth on what goes through my mind as I’m playing games like Smash. Like the optimal positions to hold the controller upside down to do certain moves, or what to press and how to press buttons.
Smash isn’t the only game I play upside down, by the way, I basically play all games on the N64 and GameCube upside down, unless the controls are inverted. I’m going to post more content in the future of me playing different games, so you can all get weirded out even more. Anyways, I hope you like the video above and my story. You can follow me on my upside down quest to find and play every game on these systems.
Big thanks to Nitchigamer, (who I started following when they were known as D-pad Joy), for letting me post on their blog too – in case you didn’t know already, these guys rock!
