Your nice hosts return to Roboston in a first for the program, revisiting and expanding upon on a previous Nice Games Jam game! Ellen conjures some frightening scenarios, Stephen and Mark work the numbers, and everybody loves conditional formatting.

• See the original rules in the show notes forRoboston! (Live at 2D Con 2020)
• Check out our cool spreadsheet of game cards and notes!
• Astral Gunners is available in Early Access, go get it!
• random.org
• Weird Alchemy - Board Game Geek
• Bagger 288 - Wikipedia

Deck of Robot Parts

Deck of Player Roles

Deck of Objectives

6-sided die

New Roles:

• Turtle: have more DEF than any other value AND complete the objective.
• Generalist: All stats within 5 points of each other AND complete the objective.
• Specialist: One stat is 7 points greater than the next highest stat AND complete the objective.

New Objectives:

• GIANT MUTANT TREE ATTACK - It's 'leafing' downtown a total mess!
  

In this episode we tried for a longer game by increasing the number of robot parts to 2 Body Parts, 2 Head Parts and 8 Limb Parts.

To create the part stats, we gave them a random number between -3 and 5 of Offense, Defense and Intelligence. Feel free to make your own!

This episode bops! Our guest on the show this week is Chel Wong, an award-winning game composer who has worked on several published and early-access titles, like Watch This Space and Kine. Her work on Kine earned the game the award for Best Audio at Reboot Develop Red 2019. From composing to mastering, we ask Chel to describe her preferred tools and workflows for creating music for games. Also, there is a tense debate—Galaxy or Sunshine?

• Meta

  Reboot Developed Red Conference

  Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) Awards

• Mark mentioned that once upon a time in a previous episode, he also talked about using Reaper."She also cheats a lot."

Games

Audio Software Tools

Instrument Synthizers

Audio Hardware

Microphones

Other Mentions

In a heavy start to a very fun episode, your nice hosts check in on each other as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches into the fall. Ellen unknowingly makes a timely West Wing reference, and Stephen only allows Mark to tell three Star Trek stories.

• You can watch Mark's mini-talk at PAX Online 2020, called "People, too" It was part of a panel on animals in games called "Lovely or Lethal: Will these animals cuddle me or kill me?"

• If you are looking to stay informed on the latest about the pandemic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other news websites are providing extensive daily COVID-19 coverage for free to non-subscribers.

The "horror movie where the seats had creepy touch" that Stephen was talking about might have been the infamous 1950s camp classic The Tingler.

Backend Tools

Welcome Heather Gartner, Art Director for Team Toadhouse studio, art streamer and huge D&D fan. Heather (she/they) has been an illustrator for 10+ years. We were so happy to have them in the virtual clubhouse and talk about impostor syndrome—what it is, where it comes from, and how to live with it...or maybe even overcome it. If you've had a tough week, or if you ever feel like your artistry is fighting you, give this one a listen. And check out Heather's art at the links below. :)

• Meta

  Perkins or Denny's for late-night breakfast fare?

Mentioned during the interview:

Further materials on teamwork and impostor syndrome:

Narrative designer Xalavier Nelson Jr. enters the clubhouse to discuss the need for game designers to curate influences outside of games, the Half-Life 2s that weren't, the XCOM that wasn't quite, and some things that were! Also, advice for criminals.

• Game Devs of Color Expo

Your nice hosts recorded a live Nice Games Jam episode at 2D Con 2020! You can listen to the edited audio of the recording here!

• You can find the video of the live recording right here!

1 Deck of Robot Parts

1 Deck of Player Roles

1 Deck of Objectives

1 Die

Deal out an even number of Robot Parts to each player, and one Player Role. Then draw the first card in the Objectives deck for the team's objective.

• Each player has a Player Role, this is their victory condition.

• Example roles:

• Warmonger: have more offensive value than any other value AND complete the objective
• Scientist: have more intelligence value than any other value AND complete the objective
• Saboteur: cause robot to fail the objective

• There are limits to how many of each type of Robot Part will fit on a robot (in the episode we went with one body part, one processor and four limbs)

• If their are some parts in conflict, roll a die to determine who's Robot Part is used.

This week, Mark becomes a game publisher and a PAX speaker, Ellen builds a desk and reads a book, and Stephen learns his lesson (almost).

• Color Jumper is available on Switch NOW!

• Our live episode for 2D Con is up on YouTube! The audio will be in the regular feed next week.

• Mark will be part of the PAX Online panel "Lovely or Lethal: Will these animals cuddle me or kill me?" on Thursday, September 17th at 6:30pm CT. PAX Online is free for all on Twitch.

• Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards - Yu-kai Chou

Your nice hosts are joined by another nice guest! Jonathan Jennings is a games and XR engineer out of California. In this episode, the Clubhouse hears from Jonathan on the state of VR—programming and design challenges, industry updates, and what we might expect from VR experiences in the near future. Also, we discuss how VR fighting games make us tired, our favorite Ninja Turtles, and who really invented the internet.

Here's a full list of topics and relevant links from this week's episode. Additional articles and such are below. Enjoy!

• Magic Leap
• Galactic Bar Fight (in development, by our nice guest)
• Locomotion options in VR (for players, for devs) 
• Weapons systems and physics in GORN (probably NSFW because it’s a “ludicrously violent VR gladiator simulator”)
• Oculus Connect 4 - Accessibility in Games conference session
• VR development on macOS
• ADB for macOS
• Matt Gravelle episode (137)
• GearVR/Daydream end of life
• Pokemon Go
• VR Chat
• Facebook Horizon
• GORN - No Weapons Run (again, probably NSFW)
• Tumble VR on PlayStation VR
• Drunken Bar Fight (Steam, PlayStation, Oculus)
• PS5 DualSense controller haptics
• The Thrill of the Fight (boxing simulation game)

Your nice hosts are doing a LIVE Nice Games Jam in a few hours, and Mark thought maybe he should tell people about it! Listen for details...

It's happening at 10pm CT... TONIGHT! at https://twitch.tv/2dcon

2D Con is raising money for AbleGamers, please donate here: https://2dcon.net/donate

Evil Games Club is back! Dale, Adia and Dylan have returned from outer space to be mean and make trouble in their 5th somewhat-less-than-hostile takeover of the program.