Here are 8 games coming to life at Philly Dev Night

After a brief stint wandering about the city for a place to host Philly Dev Night, the game developer meetup landed on an internet cafe in Chinatown called G-Team.
There, burgeoning game developers practice their craft and get feedback from one another each Thursday. Here are a few of the games Philly devs are working on.

Robert Nally, a 3D modeling teacher at Montgomery Community College and creative director at Make or Break Games, showcased an early build of a 3D virtual reality-compatible game called The Come Up, inspired by the Metroidvania genre.

Kotaru Fujita, founder of software development company Tomato Boy and co-organizer for iOS conference CocoaLove, developed a sticker pack for iOS with artist Jen Tracy called Watercolors.

Drexel professor Stephen Petitt, along with composer Rob Miller, is working on a longterm project to make a rhythm game that plays like ’80s-era Nintendo game Punch-out!! called Beat Boxing: Desperate Rhymes Call for Desperate Measures.
Dev Night hosts game jams, a competition where devs make games around a theme in two weeks or fewer, and this Dev Night’s jam was the Toy Jam. The goal was to create a game where there was no win or lose. The winners got plaques made by game developer Jake Vander Ende. All the games made at Philly Dev Night’s game jams can be played at itch.io. Here’s a look at some of the Toy Jam games.

Josh Saffran, a winner of Philly Dev Night’s game jam, showcased his mobile game “Oh, The Places.”

Marinna Romero, a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts student, made a puzzle game called Cajita De Corda (Little Box of String). The goal is to create the image of a boat, donut or anything your imagination can conjure. Romero wants to make games with actual Spanish language names to make the practice familiar.

Shawn Pierre, an integral part of making Dev Night run and founder of indie game studio OriGamInc, made a rhythm game. The goal of Paper Cars  is to get all four tracks playing simultaneously by filling the bars with musical notes.

Grant Ervin, founder of Honeycomb Interactive, made Southern Comfort Presents Paula Deen’s Butter Toucher. Mechanics are self explanatory.

Jason Corbett, a graduate from University of the Arts, made Animal Magnetism and was the winner of the Toy Jam. Conceived in the shower, Animal Magnetism was a game that allows the player to toy with physics and see how well different animals attracted.
Philly Dev Night’s Patreon is used to help fund the community gathering. Dev Night is still hoping to find a permanent home but for now is thankful for G-Team letting them use their space.
Miller, a musician who does soundtracks for a lot of games made at Dev Night invites those interested in games to come out regardless of your skill set.
“A lot of people are scared to come here because they feel they’re under-qualified,” said Miller. “But there’ll be a guy here who knows everything but [the skill you have].”
And there’s your window.

Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.