I went to IndieCade East last weekend with Charlie Hohn. Charlie and I put made a flyers for ourselves. I show some photos from the show and tell session for Quadrapus Sumo in the video above.

One of the standout pieces of technology to me was Google Cardboard that I saw being used by little wins. It turns your smart phone into a cheap, portable VR rig. I worry about the inaccessibility of building on a modestly-priced device like the Leap Motion, so this makes the prospect of building a VR application for a large audience not unthinkable.

I met the organizer of Maine Game Developers, Seth Pillsbury. He runs a game development group that meets once a month. I picked his brain because I’ve been considering starting my own group in Vermont. I intend on visiting to talk about developing for the Leap Motion and Quadrapus Sumo sometime soon.

There were a lot of excellent games. I’m just going to mention a few that stood out to me and why in no particular order.

• Particle Mace by Andy Wallace—Direct control of what’s vulnerable, indirect control of what’s offensive and lots of fun
• Axiom Verge by Tom Happ—Metroid. Metroid. METROID.
• 8 Bitty Games by Patrick Rodriguez—Yarn Ball was interesting to me in part because I made a game using a similar mechanic for an LDJAM called minimaze using a snowball (“Great minds…”).
• Hell Divers—Fun party game; has friendly fire; minigames for reviving your friends; made instant friends with strangers
• Extreme Exorcism by Mike Christatos and Andy Wallace—Four player madness, lots of settings for lots of replayability
• Exposure by Brian Chung and GJ Lee—Interesting camouflage mechanic
• Realistic Kissing Simulator by Jimmy Andrews and Loren Schmidt—Just play it. It’s web based. You’ll see why.
• Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime by Asteroid Base—It’s a game that’ll inspire instant bickering between you and your coplayer.

IndieCade East was a good experience for me, and it’s cheap as far as conferences go. I would definitely recommend it to other independent game developers.