It’s that awesome time of year again- the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF) is back! As if that wasn’t exciting enough, Rocket 5 will be participating in an event called Bit Bazaar, which is being put on by Bento Miso as a part of TCAF’s Comics VS Games 2.

On Saturday, May 11 from 12-8PM, Rocket 5 will be at Bit Bazaar promoting our upcoming game, code-named “Ghost Hunter.” A demo of the game will be available for you to play. Rocket 5′s game Get the Orb (GTO) will also be available to play. At our table, you can pre-order a copy of Ghost Hunter (working title), as well as purchase some awesome Rocket 5 and game-related merchandise.… More »

Last week we were honored to have our Ghost Hunter game chosen as one of the many awesome games showcased at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival’s Darkcade. Now as a special halloween treat, we want to give everyone a chance to play Ghost Hunter! Download Ghost Hunter for Windows or Download Ghost Hunter for Mac

We made Ghost Hunter as a family summer project with some of our nieces and nephews who ranged in age from 11 to 21! Melanie designed the characters, Max modeled all of the level art, Cathy animated the characters, Tim wrote the code, Christine managed the team and wrote the story, Rebecca, Mark and Patrick drew character and level concepts and helped with the design and Rocket (the dog) provided emotional support.… More »

Last week we did something very different – we went back to high school! Cathy and I spoke at James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic Secondary School in Toronto to nearly 200 kids over 4 class periods about how we make video games.

Part of our mission here at Rocket 5 is that we want to teach kids and parents that there’s more to video games than just playing them and that kids might want to consider a future in the industry that provides them with so much fun and entertainment. There are tons of different job skills that are needed to make video games in areas ranging from the very creative to the very technical, so you might be surprised to learn that some things you’re already interested in might help you get a job working in the games industry someday.… More »

On the weekend of May 10, 11 and 12, I attended my first ever game jam: “TOJam“. TOJam is an indie game event where about 400 people gather together in one place to hammer out their individual game concepts in just 3 days. It is a hotbed of creativity, inspiration, innovation, cooperation and bacteria. Its a place where you can meet other game developers and eat too much junk food, drink too much caffeine and get too little sleep. If you are extremely organized and very very lucky, you can walk away with a fabulous little prototype to build from.

Before TOJam I had my doubts about whether spending 3 days in a building with 400+ game jammers would be for me.… More »