Thud at Wales Games Development Show 2016

Last Saturday saw the return of the Wales Games Development Show – and what a show it was!

With scores of new games and exhibitors from around the country, the Tramshed venue near Cardiff city centre was transformed into a gamer’s haven, and it was a perfect opportunity to for us to show our latest Thud Media projects, meet new gameheads, catch up with old acquaintances and see what’s happening in the Wales game dev scene.

It was great to see lots of families attending the show this year, especially as it meant that plenty of little ones were playing our new games; Boj Smoothies and Toot’s Race were both a big hit!

This year we also had our Kinect game ZÓN up and running for a high-score competition. Throughout the whole show we had contenders stepping up to play the game and throw some shapes in the name of goal defence – and we were seriously impressed by their efforts! Congratulations again to our joint high-scorers of the day – they both earned themselves some well-deserved app store vouchers!  

We also managed to squeeze in some of the great talks from industry professionals at the event, like Byron Atkinson-Jones discussing Caretaker Sacrifice. Focusing on evolutionary game development, it was interesting to hear about how unafraid he was to make sweeping changes to the game for its benefit, despite the amount of time dedicated to a feature – for example, putting two months into developing an art style before scrapping it for a previous approach!

Later in the show was the BAFTA Cymru Games Award Ceremony, presented by star of Torchwood, Gareth David-Lloyd. He entertained with his comedy voice acting demonstrations – in fact, he was so enthusiastic he nearly knocked the BAFTA Cymru Award from the lectern!

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that Boj Smoothies was the winner in three BAFTA Cymru Games categories: Artistic Achievement, Gameplay Design and Sound and Music. We had a fantastic time developing this game with collaboration from Pesky Productions, so for it to become a BAFTA Cymru winner in all three categories was a very proud moment. Huge congratulations to all of the nominees and winners.

It was a pleasure to be part of this brilliant and busy Games Show, and to see how much the Wales games industry continues to thrive and grow. We’re already looking forward to seeing what next year will bring.