image Immediately after GDC Next we flew from Los Angeles to Paris (bypassing Austin entirely, for better or worse) to make sure we made it to Zoo Machines in time. We met up with Kaho Abe at CDG and boarded the TGV (aka amazing bullet train) up to Lille, near the border of Belgium.

Zoo Machines was utterly fantastic, and reminded me of a lot of Bivuoac Urbain. The best part was the image above was not even lying a little bit - this was a hardware jam as much as it was a software jam. Jammers built very experimental games - no shooters here, no platformers. There was a game where the game state was sent to the player via webcam and board game doppelganger, there was a big head full of buttons you put your hands into to control an Octodad-like physics disaster, and the talk of the jam was a kind of moderated intimidate truth-or-dare like game about strangers and a curtain. It was all very strange and very wonderful. It was great to finally spend some time with Joon (of 100-player Canabalt fame), and I also met Paul Vauvrey (Kingdoms), who provided a ton of help and insight with that prototype I started out in LA. Phew - ok - we’re getting close! Just one more trip to go…