Hello Aura Games fans! It’s been a very productive March for us, and a lot of important things have happened.

CHANGE OF LOCATION AND WEBSITE

There’s been quite a lot of commotion at AG Towers as we’ve recently moved our head office location from Portsmouth to Bournemouth. This was due of a brutal case of a hostile corporate takeover in which the Freeholders of our current office terminated our license and forced us out. Classic case of the big business crushing the little guy.

Okay so in reality our parents sold their house where we were registered so we’ve had to take the business elsewhere, but that sounds less exciting. So we’ve moved operations down to Bournemouth.

As a result of the “corporate takeover” fall out our website is currently down, but we’re working on a solution to this which we hope to have in place pretty quickly.

If you still need to reach us however you can do so at support@auragames.co.uk or via either our Facebook or Twitter pages.

JENNY WAS ALIVE ONCE NO MORE – THE REVENANT

Hostile takeovers aside, how is game development going? We’ve absolutely stripped back the game we made at the game jam so that now only its game mechanism features remain.

We’ve also renamed the game, so our debut game will be called, The Revenant. Why The Revenant? We’re leaving that to your imaginations at the moment, but our first piece of teaser artwork might drop some clues for some of you so keep your eyes glued to our social media pages to get an idea of what might be in store when we post this sometime next week.

The location of the game, the storyline and even sadly Jenny (she’ll live on in the AG hall of fame) are gone, replaced by different game assets, a new storyline and a more science fiction based theme (our first game was always going to have some element of sci-fi about it). You’ll all be happy to note that we are retaining the spooky “on edge” style to the game. So basically the same premise remains, a relatively short game with a particularly engaging storyline.

Two things we can say are space, and the end. Helpful? Thought so. You’re welcome.

SECOND SIGN MEETING

This month we also attended the second meet of the Southern International Games Network. The meeting took place at Bournemouth University, which is where one of our Directors was a student, so it was a nice homecoming!

The event began with a bit of networking with some of the other developers, students and lecturers of the university. One of which asked us if we’d consider taking a placement student, which we are in no way in a position to do even slightly, but it was bloody cool and made us feel grownups. We then proceeded to the main event, a talk by Mike Hawkyard who runs Amuzo Games in Bournemouth.

Mike (who was wearing a cow onesie for the entirety of the talk, because Indie-Dev) generally discussed how he has arrived at running a successful games development company. It was a particularly entertaining talk, and a lot more commercialised than previous talks we’ve attended; something that really interested us. We love making games, but a bit of profit goes a long way to making better games more efficiently, so having the skills to make that happen is something we’re very keen to obtain. We want to “follow the money”, as Mike put it.

Our favourite line however came when Mike was discussing actively producing games: “When Luke goes off to become a Jedi Knight in Star Wars. That doesn’t just happen in real life. In real life you’ve got to go and find Darth Vader and kick him in the balls.” Which we absolutely loved; it’s something we feel quite strongly about at Aura Games, if you want to do something, give it a go. Don’t worry about what others will say, what matters is you’re living your dream and giving it a go. Plus, you know, Star Wars.

We picked up quite a few commercial points from the conference, small points about selling and funding options for games that we’re definitely going to look into.

After the meeting we went for some more networking at the pub. And by “networking” we mean drinking. We touched based with some of the other indie developers, traded business cards, cracked out our alpha version of The Revenant and generally just discussed the indie world. The Southern Indie Network really is a very laid back and friendly group, and we would encourage anyone interested in making games in the South of the UK to come along!

Mike was also kind enough to spend some time talking to us in the pub afterwards, giving us some pretty solid advice about our next steps and talking about some of his experiences in the gaming world.

Then we went for waffles, because that’s just what Aura Games is about.

Well that’s all for this month, stay tuned to our social media pages for some screenshots of The Revenant and as always if you want to get in touch you can reach us on Facebook, Twitter or at support@auragames.co.uk.


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