Ever ate a burger with a developer in LAME Dimension? There’s a good chance that they will tell you about their chaotic indie game development process and adventures in Reno. But why is Reno cool in their eyes? The answer is not that complicated. Reno has the advantages of a big city, while staying as a small city so it does not have the bigger disadvantages of a big city. Aside from easy access to groceries and driving routes to other states, Reno has an airport without much traffic that makes it easy and quick for anyone to go to any gaming events, making this city in Nevada like a hub world. With this, the influence of developers in Reno can be spread easily around the world.
Do you know any other game developers in Northern Nevada? Please let us know by contacting chairgtables on Discord.
Our Indie Game Development Lore in Reno
LAME Dimension was not born in Reno, it was born in Guam. But the current lead of LAME Dimension, ChairGTables, went all the way to Reno, Nevada to study Computer Science in the University of Nevada, Reno. Chair used this chance as an excuse to make as many school projects into games as much as possible to create a solid foundation of the LAME Dimension games, which eventually led to the publishment of our first Steam games. Chair’s strong interest in fighting games and speedrunning also led to creating a sense of community in adjacent areas, especially with the ease of travelling from one place to another in Reno. This resulted in various things like being able to gather players from the gaming to community to help with testing to create a custom character for Rivals of Aether that became legal to use for multiple Smash Bros. major tournaments. The team also ran a speedrun charity marathon based on one of their game characters that ended up having Carson City’s retro game store Retro Replay to perform a run there as well. Throughout their years of participating in many communities to understand the heart of what players truly find enjoyable, LAME Dimension has also encountered multiple game development gatherings in Reno.
Is There a Group for Game Developers to Gather in Reno?
When Chair first arrived at Reno, he immediately already went on a search for other likeminded individuals. In a short time, Chair did find an unofficial game development club in the University of Nevada, Reno. The meetings, however, were infrequent and the status of the unofficial club became unknown. Chair began looking for other options and found a Meetup group for game developers, led by Conflux Games, developer of Triplicity and In Exilium. The club was very active, consistently meeting once a month with multiple venue changes. Many developers presented their projects there and stuck around for multiple years. After some time, an official game development club was formed at the University of Nevada, Reno, which was led by pixelgriffin. The Meetup group collaborated with the club at UNR, which increased the opportunities of game development in Reno.
Unfortunately, when Covid happened, the Meetup group started to slow down until all meetings came to a complete halt. The game development club at UNR also dissolved once the lead graduated. An effort was made to continue meetups thanks to Lazy Bum Games, developer of Air Guardians. After a year, the meetings once again stopped. It wasn’t until a few years later when Reno possibly had its first game jam, hosted by the ACM club in UNR. This game jam gave an opportunity for both students and non-students to create a game, although non-students could not be counted on the rankings and prizes, but that didn’t stop LAME Dimension from creating Fonzi Fuddy: Ace Defective for the event. The game jam still continues to be hosted annually at UNR, with a couple of people from the old Meetup group appearing occassionally. The future continues to shine brightly, but we continue to hope that there would be a regular monthly gathering again for game developers in Reno. Despite this, we know that game development is still strong in Reno, as there are a couple of development teams present in the city.
The Search for Reno Indie Game Developers
We talked a lot about the cool people who contributed to the life of game development in Reno, but most of those people are no longer in Reno. Most of the game development you can find in Reno are related to the casino industry, but we’re talking about indie games here, right? An awesome developer we came across at a convention in Reno is Arcane Ermine. Currently, their team is developing Obstacle Overdrive, an exciting game where you control an RC car around a chaotic array of toy obstacles. Other than them, uhh… I’m actually not sure who else is still here. We got indie dev friends too in Las Vegas but we’re talking about Northern Nevada, right? I know there are more developers, considering how many showed up at the game jam. I just gotta find out where the community is here. There is also the /dev/reno/ Meetup group, but from all of the talented people we met in that group, there really isn’t much game developers there. Hey, you! Are you a developer in Reno, Carson City, Tahoe, or anywhere around there? Please let me know and we’ll go grab some burgers!! Send a message to chairgtables on Discord or leave a message in our Guestbook that you’re a homie.