With another Ludum Dare just passed, and game jams becoming more and more popular as a way for game developers of all skills to work on new original games, its high time we discussed the lovely jam of games.

Join us as John and Andrew discuss tips and tricks weve learned from many mistakes and successes weve had in working in game jams.

As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Mythbusters proved to us all that you can indeed polish a turd, but just because its shiny doesnt mean it works.

With just two of the regulars, Andrew bittman Bittman and John gritfish Kane, we discuss the purpose and definition of polish and how it compares to the concept of juice. Particularly we have a lot of reference to Mike Bithells (from Thomas Was Alone fame) talk on polish which you can find here: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022080/Indie-Polish-Making-the-Most

As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Great apologies oh great listeners! We have been super out of it last few weeks for various reasons. Hopefully this post is a sign to return to our regular schedule.

In this episode, we are joined by special guest Dan Graf, a regular from season 1, ex-Halfbrick designer and newly independent developer. He brings forward the topic of Conveyance - what techniques and ways can we inform a player about how the game works.

As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Another week, and another guest with a return of health meaning we get our first 4 person podcast of season 2!

This week we are joined by Dylan Bevis from Featherweight Games to discuss their recent release of Skiing Yeti Mountain with a variety of topics including amount of content, advertising strategy, narrative, conceptualisation and charity.

Links to topics discussed in the episode:

Haven Expo - Videogame and Pop Culture Expo where John exhibited last week.

Featherweight Games - Our guests game development company.

As always wed love to read your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can fire our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Another week, another format. This week, weve got guest Kim Brebach of Secret Base Games in to chat about his game Monstrous, a card game which you can find on Kickstarter right now! Along the way, we chat about the design process, names and how to use Monstrous in a post title. You can find it at monstrousgame.com.

As always, wed love to hear your thoughts on the episode. Send them our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

This week, we do something a little different: each of the Game Engine hosts challenge the other two to a design challenge. The result: surprisingly deep discussions of 3 very different aspects of game design.

Some references, made without context:

The Wattam trailer from E3

The volunteers dilemma

Our listener question for this weeks topic is also a design challenge: How would you make Portal into a competitive multiplayer game? Send answers and, as always, your feedback, questions or topic ideas, our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Space. The final frontier. This is not that sort of space. Rather, it is the construction of space we deal with in physical and digital form. Architecture looks at designing and constructing physical structures; a quite similar concept to games actually whilst additionally factoring majorly into Level Design.

For Episode 2 of Season 2, Andrew Bittman, Paul Sztajer + John Kane discuss the topic of Architecture in another of our test formats: the topic-format. Following are links to some of the topics that were highlighted in discussion:

Sunset by Tale of Tales - digital architecture creating a believable space.

Laser Harp at Vivid Sydney - concerns and understanding of physical space.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - an easy-read introduction to architecture.

Our listener question for this weeks topic is: What games demonstrate amazing architecture and why? Send answers and, as always, your feedback, questions or topic ideas, our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed. Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear.

Were back again, and about time too. And this time - its season 2!

Season 2 delivers fresher voices and minds of old hats Paul Sztajer and Andrew Bittman, as well as new voice and new mind John Kane. Hiatus explanations notwithstanding, Episode 1 of Season 2 is one of a few format/style trials well be exploring at the early stage of our return. As a news focused episode, Episode 1 discusses:

First and foremost, where have we been!?

The difficulty and risks of trying to work on a unique idea (What to do when youre blindsided)

John compares his game Mallow Drops to Zukis Quest.

Testing for Mobile Development, and branding developers (Play Store to add Developer Pages, A/B app listings, and more)

Thank you to SAE Sydney for the recording space and gear. Its been a long time, but wed love to hear your feedback, questions or topic ideas, which you can throw our way via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

Paul and Andrew are joined by the creators of local iPad hit Towncraft for an in-depth discussion of its origins, development and marketing. Two years ago, brothers Rohan and Leigh Harris set out to build a tablet game that harked back to the isometric wonders of the early 90s. Recently, they hit number two in the Australian iPad charts. What manner of journey filled the space in between? What was easy? What was hard? And can you truly make money on iOS without microtransactions? Listen, and ye shall be informed.

Bonus topic: the great Steam Greenlighting, and the implications thereof. Wherein Rohan says exactly what Saul would have said if he was there, except much more eloquently.

As always, thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear. Send questions and topic ideas to us via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

For their discussion of two of the most interesting games of the year thus far - Papers Please and Gone Home - Saul, Paul and Andrew are joined by the enigmatic Tim Stobo (formally of Team Bondi and now of hard-to-articulate indie studio Quests End Games).

Both games share a focus on minutiae and involve lots of reading, but what is it that makes each of them a uniquely special experience? Is Papers Please fun, or an interesting-but-tedious chore? Does Gone Home break if you go off the beaten path? All this and more examined in anxious detail in this weeks episode.

Our bonus topic this time around is GoGs answer to Steam Greenlight - an indie-publishing service that makes up for in interesting promises what it lacks in catchy names (it doesnt appear to have one at all).

As always, thanks to Studio Ripple for our intro/outro music, and to SAE for the recording space and gear. Send questions and topic ideas to us via Facebook, Twitter or email. Subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed.