Discover. Play. Get inspired.
Welcome to the Innovation Showcase, an “art-gallery” style exhibition in which we display ten games that we consider innovative. In hope to inspire you to come up with great games ideas, we invite you to come and play these select games for Web and iOS platform at the Innovation Showcase.
Location and hours
Innovation Showcase will take place near the Bronze Sponsor area, between Starbucks and registration desks, accessible on July 24-26 from 9am until 6pm.
Supported by Exent - Innovation Showcase Gold Sponsor
Exent is the worldwide leader in PC and Android Games-on-Demand subscription distribution. Games distributed by Exent earn royalties
from the first minute of play, for the life of the title. Talk to Exent about distributing your Android and computer games
on our worldwide carrier and operator network, or about providing a subscription solution for your portal.email Exent to set up a meeting
Supported by Tapjoy - Innovation Showcase Gold Sponsor
Tapjoy is the leader in discovery, engagement and monetization services for mobile applications. The company’s turnkey
in-app advertising platform helps developers acquire cost-effective, high-value new users, drive engagement within their applications,
and create incremental income by providing an ad-funded payment method. The Tapjoy network includes over 9,000 apps and 200 million global
consumers on iOS, Android and emerging mobile platforms, delivering more than 1.5 million advertising completions per day to app developers
and big brand advertisers. Tapjoy is venture-backed and headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Silicon Valley, London and Japan.
For more, visit www.tapjoy.com email Tapjoy to set up a meeting
Supported by MePIN - Innovation Showcase Gold Sponsor
MePIN protects online games and their users against phishing and other password hacking, saves customer support costs by
preventing password related problems, and increases business by enhancing consumers' confidence to spend more money and by reminding
users to sign in more often.For the gamers MePIN provides less stress from passwords and online accounts with easy, fun and personalized online security.
MePIN's smart secure sign in and transaction verification service is is available globally, enabling online service providers to verify or sign in users on any PC, Mac or device without insecure usernames and passwords.
email MePIN to set up a meeting
Supported by Big Fish Games - Innovation Showcase Gold Sponsor
Founded in 2002, Big Fish is the leading online marketplace for premium casual games. Through its proprietary, data driven platform,
millions of consumers seeking immersive, relaxing entertainment easily discover and purchase premium casual games created by Big Fish’s
network of more than 500 development partners and in-house by Big Fish Games Studios. Renowned for offering A New Game Every Day!® on
www.bigfishgames.com, the company offers thousands of games on multiple platforms -- PC, Mac, mobile phone, and tablet.
Big Fish’s websites, games, and customer service are available in ten languages – Danish, Dutch, English, German, French,
Italian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish – and its games are sold in more than 150 countries. The company is
headquartered in Seattle, WA, with regional offices in Oakland, CA; Vancouver, Canada; Cork, Ireland; and Luxembourg. email Big Fish Games to set up a meeting
Supported by paysafecard group - Innovation Showcase Gold Sponsor
Over the past twelve years, paysafecard has established itself as Europe’s favourite safe and easy-to-use alternative prepaid payment method for e-commerce. It is available in 30 countries worldwide. The smart payment solution is designed for users who don’t have a credit or debit card or who don’t want to use their credit card for online purchases and other micro payments on the Internet. Users simply authorize a payment by entering a 16-digit PIN, similar to the system used with prepaid phone cards. Thousands of e-businesses are benefiting from new customers by offering this safe and uncomplicated payment solution. paysafecard is available in € 10, € 25, € 50 and € 100 e-vouchers at more than 450,000 outlets across Europe and America.email paysafecard group to set up a meeting
Supported by Cloudant - Innovation Showcase Silver Sponsor
The Cloudant Data Layer is a managed service for developers of large-scale or fast-growing web and mobile games who want a data layer
they can grow into, not out of. Cloudant is powered by Apache CouchDB, with a RESTful JSON API, built-in incremental MapReducse, and full-text search, which allows developers to focus on building their games, not
managing databases.email Cloudant to set up a meeting
INNOVATION SHOWCASE - SEATTLE 2012
Battle Panic is the fastest, craziest RTS under the sun – build units, collect resources, fight, heal, and smite all without a single click! Super streamlined RTS play makes the battles fast, furious, and all about where your cursor hovers. Our team used mouse hover to good effect in our Hungry Sumo game, and we wanted to push this idea further by doing all of the troop and resource management with hover – the player just points at what they want and the right action happens.
Beyond more awesomer controls, we wanted to have heaps of units on screen. We were used to doing lots of units with our zombie games, but this time hordes with swords was the right fit, along with big fantasy bosses. Upgrades are streamlined in unit production, and we added extra awesome to our skills, which make gameplay quite different depending on where you spend your skill points. Music was also incredibly important, and we spent significant effort on original, interactive game music that intensifies and swells when it gets really panicky. Definitely play with headphones if you can, and hope you enjoy Battle Panic!
- Ninja Kiwi
Clockwork is a puzzle game based on the idea of “freeing” a specific piece of the puzzle by rearranging the others.
I originally saw the concept in a board game called Rush Hour, and later in computer games using a grid based system.
I decided to use the same concept with a system of circular pieces, which would spin about a central point rather than slide
around a grid. From there, I thought a lot about the timing of piece movement and mechanical systems, and made the pieces move
together in synchronization. This way, each level seems more like a large, complex mechanism rather than a series of single parts,
hence the name, Clockwork.
- Mr. Beud
Shoot and Roll your way to victory in this unique puzzle shooter in only 50x50 pixels.
You control the gun-brick, a square block that can rotate left and right. One surface on the square block has a shield and the opposite side has a gun and by orienting yourself into the correct direction, you can shoot things, block things, shunt yourself sideways and even rocket jump!
Because the game had to fit within the icon, we have had to squeeze the game into just 50x50 pixels! It was both a lot of fun and a challenge to see what we could do within this limitation.
The game can be played in both its tiny icon size of 50 pixels or blown up to a larger size of 550x550 at any point during gameplay.
- Nitrome Ltd
First, I didn’t like upgrade games at all and thought it was a cheap way to stretch a short game. Funny enough, I found myself playing some of these more and more and even got a bit addicted. Most of these games are tossers and I thought it’d be funny to take the upgrade theme to a platformer… where you even have to upgrade such basic things as the running speed and time limit. It rather started as a kind of persiflage but turned out to be a really great game.
- Gameshot.org
Old Man Baby was developed over 48 hours for the What Would Molydeux game jam where the idea was to make a
game based of a tweet from Peter Molydeux (the parody Twitter account of game designer Peter Molyneux).
The tweet we based the game off was "You grow from baby to old man and back to baby and this keeps looping every
10 seconds. Small gap? Time it so you can go through as a baby."
Essentially, we aimed to make a short but challenging puzzle game that had a few interesting mechanics.
- Andrew Brophy, James Rhodes, Guy Noble, Matt Parsons
The game was made as an entry for Ludum Dare 23. My inspiration for the game was I Saw Her Standing There and previous LD22 entry,
Midas. The theme for Ludum Dare 23 was Tiny World, so I created levels that get smaller as you progress. To be able to beat those levels,
I introduced new mechanics every level like This is the Only Level, and then I used romantic words to give the hints.
I wanted something cool cliffhanger for the ending, so I just left it like that, with a sad ending which surprisingly hit the hearts
of many players.
- Keybol
Shark Dash is Gameloft’s latest physics based puzzle game featuring amazingly accessible gameplay for casual gamers of all ages. With a unique cartoonish style design, gamers are invited to play along with Sharkee and his merry band of toy sharks as they take on a series of mischievous ducks that are set out to ruin their peaceful little bathtub world. Having been made a little loopy from the chemicals they are produced with, these rubber ducks decide to tease the sharks and kidnap Sally (Sharkee’s girlfriend). Now it’s up to you to save Sally and rid over 96 increasingly challenging levels of these pesty rubber toys.
- Gameloft
Ski Safari is a whacky “endless skier” with rideable animals and a relentless avalanche.
You play as Sven, a deep sleeping mountaineer, as he skis, jumps, slides, glides, rides
and tumbles his way down a snowy slope.
Ski Safari came from a couple of hobby gameplay prototypes. The first was a singlebutton
side-scrolling flying mechanic where you glide and collect things as a paper
airplane. The other was inspired by Tiny Wings and involved some procedural terrain
and a rock rolling and jumping down smooth hills. Those prototypes combined, with the
gliding from the airplane prototype and the custom terrain physics, to form the basics of
a humble skiing game.
- Brendan Watts and Shawn Eustace, Defiant Development
Slingshot Racing is an original racing game developed exclusively for iOS devices.
The game has unique controls for a racing game: controls are tap and release as you go around turns, to grapple and sling your racer along. This way the screen isn’t blocked because of each pointer finger on the corners – not in the way of the gameplay.
Behold a beautiful steampunk environment with ice tracks, grappling hooks, snowmen and more!
- Published by Crescent Moon Games, Developed by Snowbolt Interactive
Talesworth Adventure: The Lost Artifacts is a unique puzzle adventure. The player is tasked with guiding our brave,
yet shockingly dim, protagonist (Questy) through the dangerous kingdom of Talesworth. Players must use a limited set of tools
in each room, such as loot bags and one-way gates, to help Questy obtain the key and exit the room.
My biggest source of inspiration for this game was my love for graph paper maps.I grew up playing D&D
and computer RPGs, and tile-based maps have always been a work of art in my eyes. Talesworth Adventure started on graph paper,
with all the original maps being play-tested before a single line of code was written. Keeping the entire world connected,
from room to room, was an early and important design decision. My goal was to slowly reveal one giant, interconnected map to
keep the player immersed.
The key principal that drives my game design, especially puzzle games,
is simplicity. I believe that it is easy to design a complicated game. However, designing a game that is fun, and yet elegantly
simple, is quite difficult. As any game design flourishes, exceptions inevitably just beg to be made. When that happens, I force
myself to rethink the rules.
- Sean Gailey