Few people is aware games are being made in this country, let alone in town – not even the locals.

September 18

Over a local developers’ WhatsApp group, a friend (Pipe Nieto) asked for our thoughts about local comic-con-like “geek culture” events; another friend (Sandra Castro) replied that even if such events already have gaming-related areas, it would be great if they would serve as a venue for the local industry to showcase their creations.

That brought back into my head an idea I had to create a “collective” of indie game developers from Medellín (my hometown); as a group, this could potentially make it easier for us to seek visibility both in the web and socials, but also in physical events in and out of town. Maybe even make some bundles in steam, maybe fly around the world taking the name of the city and the cool games we are making.

I forgot already where the medellíndies name came from, but I thought it was too cool to let it pass. So I set myself to make it a reality.

September 19

As I created an initial spec I stumbled upon the obvious: medellindies sounds cool but it also spells out “medellin dies”. I considered other options but I decided to stick with it and have that dichotomy be part of its identity. I hope it doesn’t bite back at me.

medellin dies lol

I thought my initial plans were quite simple; a PHP+MySQL app where people could join, then submit their games for approval. But as I went into its design I realized that even at a basic level, most of the app would involve identity management, and would require already a backend to authorize, verify email accounts, etc. Boring!

In the end I went for something even simpler… anticipating the volume of data I’ll be handling initially, I decided to replicate a bit of what I do with slashie.net, basically the data is contained in JSON files I edit manually.

After iterating a bit, I had a website running, but it was time to make the logo for it. My idea was to use the iconic Coltejer tower as a distinctive part of it, actually for its inflection which was its more important element. Other than that I went for a very traditional bold geometric slab serif font.

Now, for the visuals of the website, I wanted something inspired by the landscape of the Aburrá valley, green mountains, blue skies, all laid out in a clean bright layout. I had to iterate a bit with the logo and text legibility, tweaking colors and moving elements around to make it look nice in mobile as well, but it ended up fine I think.

With the website mostly in place, next step was to fill it with real content; of course, my games where the first to go in (el burro por adelante), next up I added Logicubes and Farmageddon from friends IndieLevelStudio.

September 22

I had the reflex to try and tighten the scope of the games so that it was a portfolio of strictly indie games only, which initially seemed like a good idea, but was put under fire the moment I thought it was time to open a bit more, and set myself to create a form people could fill to submit their games.

I ended up spending a lot of energies thinking on the eligibility criteria: what’s an indie? the eternal question.

September 24

After a lot of philosophical wandering, I landed up in the obvious: it doesn’t matter much, less so for a portfolio of games made in Medellín, where the industry is still growing. So I loosened the criteria on that.

The other point I spent some time thinking about was: should this be a collection of completed, published games? or should I allow demos? the question came from the fact that there are, certainly, a lot of promising projects in development, but sadly, few of these will reach completion – and I wanted people to know we have complete games in Medellín, not just some good effort.

This part isn’t decided yet.