IGDA Philadelphia Game Showcase spotlights games by 11 Greater Philadelphia area game developers

The only thing more fun than walking into a room where you can play all the video games you want may be to do that while getting to meet the developers who actually made the games.

That rare privilege is what brought more than 150 people out to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Philadelphia Game Showcase held in conjunction with the second annual Philly Tech Week presented by AT&T Wednesday.

Held in the otherwise empty storefront space that will soon be an expansion of coworking haunt Indy Hall in Old City, 11 Philadelphia-area and New Jersey based game developers set up PC’s, Macs, iPads and iPhones to let a flow of visitors try out their games.

Old City-based Cipher Prime brought a beta-version of its forthcoming game, Splice, for attendees to test out. The studio recently made news headlines for successfully funding a game concept via Kickstarter, as Technically Philly reported.

Other development shops in attendance included AMI Entertainment, Board Raptor Games, Dumb and Fat Games, Double Veh Audio, Flyclops, Island Officials, OriGamInc, Little Wins LLC, and Reflective Layer.

Though not officially a studio, New Jersey-based Caged Elements brought the first-person shooter game that the group made as part of a class project.

As visitors drifted from table to table, the developers stood on hand to explain their games.

Parker Whitney of FlyClops told Technically Philly the inspiration to build a Dominoes game for a mobile device was pretty simple: he and a friend realized the game didn’t exist.

“We’re on the bus and he’s like ‘Hey why don’t we just download a Dominoes game and play each other.’ We go to do to that and it just doesn’t exist,” said Whitney. “Really there was no turn-based Dominoes game.”

The Greater Philadelphia area is developing a burgeoning gaming industry, with more than 15 studios setting up in the area over the last year, according to IGDA Philly leadership.

If you missed the IGDA Philly Game Showcase, check out the Philly Tech Week Signature Event on Friday night where you can still catch a few cool game demos.