Sayhello-hello

Reflections on Blackwell

2012-01-30T07:21:00.000-08:00

I've been in a lot of doubt whether to mention this game or not, since I kind of denounced it by having my name removed from the credits. Nonetheless I feel it is quite important to reflect on it and why it went so wrong that I ended up not only being frustated with the concept and game but also myself. In fact mostly frustrated with myself. A bit of time has passed since the production, so I've mellowed out a bit and will be able to reflect a bit more neutral now.

Positives:

Focused and good looking game. The game had a very unified look and a fairly interesting and unique visual, which I had nothing to do with as such, but it carries the game a great distance and masks the poor design decisions quite well. Apart from that I complied to the game vision, despite greatly disagreeing with it which is important because it focuses the product. The director steered the creative ship very well, despite having a designer massively disagreeing, which turned out an okay product.
Leaving ego aside (kind of). As said, I did comply with the game vision and designed whatever this game needed, however nowhere near as good as it could have been. I did sulk around for quite a bit and wasn't as constructive as I could have been, at points I wanted the project to fail, however despite my personal problems with the concept, the project ended up okay. I recognise that everyone has to be on the same ship in order for a game to succeed, we might not all want to be there, but while you're there, you have to fall in line in order to reach shore.
Well constructed and good use of wiki. With a team of 18 people I believe a well constructed design document at the start of the project is crucial for making everyone understand where the project is going. Looking back it was a very well constructed wiki that was utilized by the team, but on the other hand, by having it so complete at the beginning could very well have closed down the idea of the concept being iterative, and the team might have felt like they didn't have a big say in the design.

Negatives:

Testing. Too much of it at the wrong time. This game relied heavily on AI, in fact all of it relied on the AI, therefore it was not constructive to test as early as we did because the game was too bugged down by technical problems that it became bug testing rather than playtesting. Early playtesting works for games that play like toys, not for games that demand a huge system built for it.
Not fighting for the good decisions. Because I found it very hard to care. As mentioned I wanted the project to fail at certain points during production and therefore I went from actively hating the game to not caring too much about it in order for me to make decisions that would benefit the game. However there were many decisions that I might have raised a question about but then subsequently let it go, when it met a bit of resistance. E.g. the tutorial only found its way back into the game after being scrapped was because the lead programmer fought for it. It should not have been his fight but mine.
Working without a target audience. We designed without a target audience which in hindsight was a huge mistake, because there were massive creative disagreements within the leads team. Games are not movies, it is not one-way communication between audience and artifact but a dialogue. Therefore it is exceptionally important to work with a target audience, especially when the team very obviously do not share the same taste. It will focus the product and not only that, give ownership to the whole team. We are not designing for ourselves but for someone.

In the end the project turned out okay. It was an exceptionally good team effort without interpersonal problems, some us had problems with the game but still turned up for work and falling into line which in the end probably saved it.

B'looning Away, background art

2011-12-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

Despite taking a break from it for several months now, I'm slowly returning to it. Background art is completely finished but right now I need/want to start some prototyping before moving on to more art.

In the meantime, some cuts of the background art.

In development: Blackwell

2011-11-26T02:32:00.000-08:00

So currently I am part of a program called DADIU, which is a collaboration between students across universities where we are given a task of designing a game. I'm designer in a 16 person team and the game we are making is called Blackwell.

It tells the story of a woman unjustly put in an insane asylum in the 1890's, back when a woman's disobedience was considered insanity. It's a first person stealth game where the player is stripped weapons and not only that, she is drugged in the beginning of the game which gives her some vision and movement difficulties. Throughout the game, the effects will just get worse and worse making this a truly punishing game. Is it something I would play myself? No. But this design is something that this particular concept calls for.

Here's some layout I did for the executive document we had to hand in at one point. This page illustrates a gameplay moment and the core of the game.

Swag!

2011-10-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Swag! was the result of a two-day UNITY crash course game jam. The game builds a bit on an idea I played with last semester for my Experimental Interaction game, but then I ended up making a headbanging game for that. However this small idea proved perfect for a small game jam session.

The goal of the game is to make the player feel AWESOME about him/herself. The best way to go about that is simply to walk and add cool disco music. So if you feel bad about yourself, go play Swag!

Reflections on: Smash-o-Saurus

2011-09-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

A "reflections on" post without an "in development" post indicates a short period of production. Which is very true for this first DADIU-production in this semester.
The premise is basically that we had one week (16-person team) to develop a game with a set of conditions handed to us, where the most limiting one was that the target audience had to be tweens.
The game we ended up developing was a monster smashing game for boys in that age group. You play as a boy in a monster suit smashing stuff, the more stuff you smashed the bigger you grew and at the end you would be an actual HUGE monster going around smashing whole cities.
The challenge was to keep smashing stuff as your chaosmeter would go down unless you caused chaos. So the game was meant as katamari, except smashing stuff rather than collecting stuff.

Postitives:

Limits reached. This game was MASSIVE! I think that during this one week the team showed how effective we could work. Considering that we are 16 people working together for the first time, the fact that we attempted to do something of this scale and to a certain extent actually managed something of this size (even though cut down in size, it's still a big game). The game is of course deeply flawed, but the process showed us what the art team is capable of (being only 4 vs. 8 programmers). It also showed us what the programmers can do within UNITY. We were pushing UNITY quite a lot with the massive amounts of destructable buildings in the game.
Target audience, check! During production we managed to test the game on our target audience (midway through production). The test, although small and containing a very crude version of the game showed us that we were on the right direction. The boys that tested the game were all fairly excited about the premise of being a monster smashing stuff and growing into an even cooler monster. Of course a lot of times kids just get excited about new stuff, however considering the crude nature of our build, it was positive that they still enjoyed running around smashing random stuff.
My designerly ways. I'm glad I managed not to lose myself as a designer during this production. This is by far the biggest team, I've ever worked in and I'm happy that I managed to design the way that I prefer to design even within a bigger team. Basically I like to design the play before the game and I feel like this game showcases that. It is of course deeply flawed, but I hope the team kind of understands how I work and design now.

Negatives:

Scope is key! Again it seems like I'm involved in a project going way out of scope. Thinking back on the conceptualisation is a big question mark. How could we ever think that this game would be feasible within the one-week time limit? The ridiculuos amount of props that the art team had to do, the three different character models, each with their sets of animations, massive destructable buildings (that Unity can't quite handle), levels built within each other? What were we thinking? Completely out of scope. So although the whole team was onboard with the concept and excited about it, it could not make up for the fact that this project was just out of scope.
Design for the format. The game had a condition that said that is had to run in a browser with the keyboard and mouse controls. Even though I knew about this way before conceptualisation I still ended up designing a control scheme (and game) that would have been better suited for a console. One of the main mechanics of swiping in different directions (in order to smash) would have been much better suited to a double analog stick control scheme. This was meant as a PC browser but was designed as a console executable. This is completely on my shoulders as a designer and for next time I will definately keep in mind to design for the format and use the affordances and constraints that come along with it.
Where is plan B? This again links very closely to the out-of-scope problem. First of all, we should have seen that it was out of scope sooner than we did. Second of all we should have had a plan b (or a cut-down plan) so that we could scale the game down if needed. Instead we saw the problem and kept on going. This is a team reflection however personally I know that I have problems killing my darlings, which I should probably try to deal with, e.g. the console controls of this game was something I should have dealt with instead of just leaving it there, because I thought "this would be good on a console". Well we weren't designing a console game, so I should have dealt with it.

All in all, this game was more of a learning experience than a make a great game experience. However it was a HUGE learning experience and although the game that came out at the other end wasn't good, I think it had/have potential to be really good. I think we managed to do a lot during a one week production and can only imagine that whatever we make for the big production later in the semester will be awe-inspiring. In the meantime you can go play Smash-o-Saurus.

B'looning Away, back to work

2011-08-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

One month of vacation over and it's back to work. Here's what I slowly managed to finish within the last week (working a bit slowly at the moment, adjusting to not being on holiday anymore). However despite working a bit slowly at the moment, I can see this project finishing for january.

We're moving into space with a space hotel. (Very Jetsons inspired)

In development: B'looning Away (mini-update)

2011-06-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

My development frenzy for B'looning Away has kind of died down now after the initial 2-3 weeks of total excitement and now it's down to work. Although in that time I did manage to squeeze out backgrounds for 3 out of 5 levels, so it's been a very productive frenzy.

Here is a shoehouse for the game.

Reflections on: Octave

2011-06-22T10:20:00.000-07:00

After a good months time and an exam out of the way, I believe it is time to take a critical look at Octave.

Octave started production in late february with a six person team (team Composerology!) and ended when we handed in the game late May. As already covered before I had the double role of lead designer (ensuring cohesion in the game) as well as 2D artist which are two roles I'm fairly happy with and feel like I have been succesful in fulfilling both roles.

When we started working on Octave we set out to build a unique universe with a creational musical tool to battle enemies and influence the environment. Furthermore narrative was quite important (however not really been implemented properly) so I will give a recap of it:
Octave Hertz Hobbman is a composer who, at the beginnning of the game, receives a letter from his estranged and dying father begging forgiveness for some unknown "sin" that he has committed. This "sin" should become clear throughout the game. (But unfortunately it doesn't really)

Positives:

Hardworking team! I was extreemely lucky to be slotted in a very hardworking and ambitious team which really boosts your morale. Furthermore our PM (who chose the team) had chosen a very balanced team with people to fill every role needed very competently. Not much else to say on this topic, but it is worth mentioning.
Dense universe. I had really worked overtime, especially in the beginning of the process to create a dense fictional universe for the game, which worked out as I believe it was key in creating cohesion in the game. There was a lot of fiction created for the game, which didn't make it in but that doesn't really matter because it was important that the team knows there is more behind and knows why characters are motivated by certain things. In that way, by creating this dense universe everyone else on the team would basically make decisions that would naturally slot seamlessly into the universe. (Which was almost 100% succesful)
Communication. This production was different from last semester's production because it was both developed in a slightly larger team but more importantly that we were slotted into very defined roles. This has really prepped me towards how it is going to be when I am at one point "released into the wild" and also for DADIU next semester. Communication is key when everyone has their different areas to attend to and I really need to compliment our PM for his stand-up meetings everytime we got together. These little status checks gave us a good idea of what everyone had been doing and was going to do and in that way, we always knew where we had eachother and if anyone was starting to move slightly off course they could quickly be reeled back in. Furthermore I think I communicated the core ideas and universe of the game to the team fairly well through a very detailed and structured design wiki.

Negatives:

Too much, too little space. The main reason why this game falls a bit short is due to the team collective high ambitions. The fact that we wanted to make a narrative driven game (with platforming/action mechanics) is in hindsight a mistake. Narrative takes subtlety and polish, something we didn't have time for (nor skills) and furthermore narrative, in cases where the actual game itself has action elements and fairly heavy mechanically, is pushed aside and left for the end. Completely understandable as gameplay HAS to work but it also means that we have a game that wanted to immerse and tell players a story, but ended up not even half-assed, but tenth of an ass in that regard.
Live and let live. This is more of a personal reflection. As I was appointed lead designer/2D artist I should probably not have wandered into mechanics as much as I did. At the beginning of the process I was quite pushy in regards to what kind of a game I wanted to make and how I wanted the mechanics to be simple and intuitive. This point of view massively clashed with the level/gameplay designer's view and we had quite a lot of discussions on this and also started out with a very compromised main mechanic that was faulty. After we found out that our mechanic wasn't very good I finally was able to let go and give him his control and responsibility, and he got the solution that he wanted from the beginning. I am first and foremost a designer and therefore it's very natural for me to want control over a large part of the mechanics as it is so important for player experience. At the same time I am quite adventurous because these are student productions and therfore I'd like to push the envelope a bit. However I realise that sometimes I need to let go of control and trust the people around me.
Difficulty level +10. This game is difficult and we completely missed the target audience that we had set up for ourselves. The target audience were gamers who were familiar with the WASD control scheme but weren't the kind who played religiously every day (basically me or someone with a little less experience than me). However we ended up with a game that only really hardcore gamers would be able to play, in fact the two least hardcore members of the team, our composer and myself even had some difficulty with the game. This is not necessarily a bad thing because our game just targets a very hardcore audience. But since we had set up a target audience I still find it a bit troublesome that we didn't hit it and I'm not sure if I should have done more to focus on the target, but it just happened to be natural progressing in our development.

I could probably go on writing pages on the reflection of Octave (which indeed I did, but that was more course related), however I will stop here. In general the production of Octave has been a very positive experience, I'm not elated with the end product but rather satisfied. I'll really miss the team and our awesome cake days especially also because I'm attending DADIU next semester, so won't really be seeing them in classes either. It's been a great team, great production period and a mixed end result, but never mind that.

John the Happy Man

2011-06-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

The final chapter of John's story and pursuit of Dottie. Only a few more steps and they'll live happily ever after.

Use 1-8 to play simple musical harmonies to bring them closer to eachother. This sketch used a tone instrument with a oscillator sound which I actually thinks works pretty well, it has a innocent and slightly nostalgic sound to it. Works better than the sound of a "real" instrument for this sketch.

Go make John a happy man.

Sketches: John the Dancer

2011-06-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

What's this? Could it be John, happy and in love?

Finally Dottie, the love of John's life, has seemed to respond positively to some of his advances. Completely drunk with love he starts a dancing frenzy!

Oh, did I mention, this sketch is in 3D! So go check out John the Dancer. (Might take a long time to load)

In development: B'looning Away

2011-06-10T05:53:00.000-07:00

No rest for the wicked, I've started working on a game again almost right after finishing up all the mandatory semester projects.

The basic concept is the same as Neno from my first semester, however it will be completely redone and all the extra narrative and gameplay stuff that was piled onto the Neno will be stripped off, so it will end up being the concept initially pitched. The reason why it's important for me to remake and work with this concept again is that I feel it has potential to be an interesting experience (although not necessarily a game). There's something very innocent and nostalgic about blowing around a balloon.

The game will now be about a boy who has lost his balloon (so there is no longer a boy from space). The player will then be left to explore the universe and fly higher up or collect things to fly down and reunite the balloon with the boy. The balloon will always be moving upwards in a certain speed unless the player collect things which will weigh it down for a while, and then it starts moving up again. A very simple premise for what is a very simple game.

Although I initially thought I was going to reuse the art assets from Neno, I ended up redoing everything again and it looks much nicer now when there's no time constraint and absolute creative freedom. In fact I am enjoying creating assets for this game so much, that I ended up having made the background for the first level within one week, but there's still a long way to go.

Sketches: John the Stalker

2011-05-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

Here's another of my processing sketches from this semester. In this one John assumes the role of a love struck man (aka stalker).

John has met the girl of his dreams, unfortunately he's not the guy of her dreams. Use the arrows keys to get close to her and fill you love meter, but not too close or else she'll just think you're a creepy stalker.

So go and ogle the girl (aka the dot) in John the Stalker.

Reflections: The Date

2011-05-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

The Date is the other game I've been working on this semester and that have for good reasons taken a back seat compared to the massive Octave project.

However I'm actually quite proud of it and did not feel like working on this game was annoying or a burden. I might even say this game is a more "complete" package than Octave is.

The vision was to create a game where we wanted to link the player's compulsive actions to an OCD patients compulsive actions and thereby create awareness around OCD and how there is a fine line between just being cautious and actually being OCD. Also we wanted to question players' natural score hoarding and how irrational it actually is and hold it up against an OCD patient's actions.

Positives:

Consistent artstyle. I seem to say this about every game I make, but it is very important to maintain looks, whether you like it or not, graphics are a HUGE part of games. The art duties were not dependent on me solely (for the first time) but was shared with another artist. I was responsible for characters, the interface and the end/start screens whereas he had the game objects and their animation. Sharing duties was a very interesting experience and furthermore to keep it consistent as if one person had made everything also shows the flexibility that both of us had. Another thing I'm proud of with the artstyle is that it is interesting despite being so simplistic.
Fun factor. One of the things we were worried about while making this game was that it would not be any fun because of the simple interaction scheme (Spacebar + arrows) and the fact that the game has absolutely NO challenges whatsoever. In order to counter that issue, we wrote a lot of dialogue (monologue) for the character which has received a lot of positive feedback and created a lot a fun. The speech bubbles also acted as a heavy motivator for interacting with the game objects.
Theory proven true. This game was built on a theory we had in the group, that gamers for whatever ever reasons would often be so compelled to gain high scores, regardless of whether the game was challenging/fun. This proved to be a good enough reason to actually build the game on as they did indeed behave in the way that we had anticipated. Scores are very strong incentives to make players do things.

Negatives:

OCD communication. As this game was actually about OCD, we might have fallen a little short on communicating the message to the player. Originally the plan had been to actually integrate OCD information into the actual game and let realisation hit the player, that he was the one contributing to the character's disorder. However we ended up cutting most OCD related topics in the game and putting it in the end. This is a bit of a "screw-you" design as you pull the rug from under the player's feet and revealing what the game is really about. It runs the risk of being skipped and players feeling tricked.

I am quite happy with this game as I feel it provides a good play experience. Whether it is a good awareness game about OCD is very questionable, however even if it isn't a good awareness game, I feel players will still be able to take something away from it.

The Date is playable from here.

Octave

2011-05-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

It's finally here! The massive project for the game development course this semester was finally turned in two days ago and the result is pretty good.
Octave is a third person action/adventure where you play a maddened composer travelling into his own mind and using music to destroy his inner demons.
I am going to do a reflections post later, when there's a bit more time and also in order to get a bit of distance to the project. Until then here's a trailer (that I edited in Window Movie Maker).

Neno, a bit animation

2011-04-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

Aww... Though Neno is long gone I still can't let the little guy walk away completely. Here's an animation I did for him but didn't make it into our build. Obviously he's not supposed to constantly swing like this but just when the player blows wind on his balloon.

Sketches: John the Beatnik Poet

2011-04-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

So here's another interactive sketch from the interesting life of a little grey and very rectangle man. This one utilized picking up strings from a website. I had chosen "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman from gutenberg.org because the example (which this program evolved from) from Schiffman's "Learning Processing" used this site and also the code on the site is very easy to read and work with.

John has in his quest for love become a beatnik poet. Why? Because chicks dig it, man!
So go and help John make poems here:
John the Beatnik Poet.

In development: The date

2011-04-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

This is second game that I'm working on this semester next to the Octave project. This game is part of a course called Persuasive and Serious Games and therefore must contain some sort of purpose outside the game itself.

The game is called The Date and is about creating awareness around OCD. As it is a disorder that manifests itself in actions, it lends itself well to videogames, as games are mostly about actions.
The premise is: You play as Mark, a little guy just going about his daily business, but as the game progresses you start to do more and more compulsive behavior and in the end the OCD takes over your life.
The most important point to make here is that the player is not told that his character has OCD, but instead it is something the player gradually "gives" his character.

During a game (any game not just this one), so many compulsive actions are being made, and why? Because often we are rewarded with scores which just makes us feel good. They might not contribute to anything but yet we always have an urge to max out the score. This notion is what we build this game on as the player will automatically have an urge to seek out high scores and through that will contribute to his character's OCD. That way we are trying to create a bridge between the character's OCD and the player's compulsive in-game behaviour in an attempt to make an effective game about OCD.

In this project I'm working with three other people and I play the role of designer/writer and artist. This is actually the first game where I am not 100% in charge of art but rather just dealing with the character(s) and GUI, which is really nice. Also it's a new experience trying to blend two artists' styles together, but I think we have managed quite well.

Here's the token one graphic per blogpost, an animated GIF of the walking cycle I did for the main character.

Sketches: John the Speeddater

2011-04-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Holy moly, I can program! That's right, I took a programming course in Processing this semester and as a result have created a number of small interactive sketches, some might call them games, others might just call them waste of time.
Regardless, I feel pretty proud of them despite the fact that some of them are pretty buggy, like the one I present to you below.

Without any ado, here is the very first substantial sketch I made, called John the Speeddater.

In development: Octave (pt 2)

2011-03-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

Pre-production is about to finish (or it actually just finished recently) on the massive game development project for this semester about the mad composer Octave Hertz Hobbman.

The pre-production period can be summed up in three words. No more art (please). As said in the previous post about Octave I was handed a triple role in this production including the role of 2d artist and therefore also designer of characters. I think I might have underestimated the scale of this role a little bit because thinking back on the pre-production I've been drawing A LOT, providing blueprints for the 3D artist, concept art (for something to look at I guess), sketches for all kinds of stuff. So what do you do if work starts to flood over, you delegate the task of designing some assets to the project manager and hey presto! Work has kind of been levelled out again (but not really, I still feel like I'm constantly working).

The art stress is also due to the fact that the design document as well as the narrative had to be pinned down in this period, which is why I really felt the heat. As artist is also my least favourite role and something I had preferred to hand over to someone more capable obviously I feel that it takes up too much of my time. But luckily the design document and narrative is now done and so I can ease a bit on those roles as I head into the production phase as an artist and writer (and UI designer), so hopefully I'll be able to enjoy the role of artist a bit more now.

RANT OVER.

The game feels like it's going to be good and we have a very balanced team (consisting of people who fill out all the roles pretty well). My only doubt right now is concerning the battle mechanic, which consist of a timer wheel where the player has to time mouseclicks with the right parts of the circle. All this is done in real time and from the sound of where the gameplay/level designer is headed, it sounds like there will be a fairly large amount of enemies. I don't like the sound of that because it's sounds like a difficult and frustating game, taking a fairly long amount of time to form a combo in order to battle just one enemies, if there are more of them, well...

But we shall see, scaling the number of enemies down will be easy enough, so might as well stress the engine and run lots of them in the testings, I guess.

Lastly here are some sketches of the combat wheel (cadence wheel as we call it), in case my description didn't make sense:

In development: Octave

2011-02-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

Another semester, another game. Actually not only one game, but possibly three games to be handed in at the end of the semester which I'm already starting to stress about a little.

The first one I will introduce here is the biggest project called Octave and developed in a six man (and woman) team. What is the most interesting part about this project compared to the project last semester is that it has to be in 3D and that everyone in the team will have clear roles and responsibilities. A bit like a tiny development studio.

My role in this team is lead designer, writer and 2D artist. I'm quite happy about the first two roles as they were the ones I had originally hoped for and as we didn't have any 2D artists as such in our group, I was handed that role as well.
So responsibilities are mostly write material for the game, including setting up the game narrative, writing dialogue as well as writing in-team communication in regards to the game, in other words I'm responsible for writing almost everything in the development.

We have another designer in the team who is given the task of being both level and gameplay designer meaning that he will handle and produce all the smaller bits of the design and work out how exactly those things communicate with each other. I, as a lead designer on the other hand, have a more overall role of creating and securing a unified look and feel to the game. That is not to say I won't get involved in the other fields, I just won't be responsible for making it function in practical terms.

I predict it will be a gruelling development phase of about 3-4 months, but we'll make work.

Anyway, here is a short description of Octave and a piece of concept art I made:

Travel inside the mind of troubled composer Octave Hertz Hobbman, explore the depths of his creativity and the darkness that hides within it.
Use the unique recital battle system, where you, the player, creates and recites music to combat inner demons and restore the sanity of Hobbman

Octave is a third person action adventure game that places heavy emphasis on the musical world of the main character, Octave Hertz Hobbman. A unique recital system gives the player the opportunity to recreate powerful music to dupe and defeat enemies as well as manipulate the environment.

The dictator (on hold)

2011-02-11T01:10:00.000-08:00

I have decided to put the dictator on hold for now. Something that unfortunately happens too often, where I start a project and end up putting it on hold (sometimes definate, sometimes not).

The reason why is mainly that I suddenly got busy with two game projects in spring semester and a programming project (likely also a game). And frankly juggling around four digital games is no fun.
The other reason is my insecurities as an artist. I want this game to look good (better than the ones I've made before) and in order to do that, I either need to find an artist or become a better artist myself, both of which will take time.

It's always a bit of a downer when you have to put a project on hold, especially one where you actually have put in some work rather than just conceptualising. But I am however working on a new and physical game, where my programming skills aren't needed and art consists mainly of graphic design, so this will be a nice break from all the digital games I have to make this semester.

Here are some backgrounds I tried to make for The Dictator:

And a walkcycle for the main character:

HeroNet

2011-02-01T05:53:00.000-08:00

I developed this game with a great group of people during the Nordic Game Jam last weekend, where we had 48 hours to make a game. Funny enough I went to the board games track thinking I didn't feel like spending a weekend with tired and grumpy programmers (an they probably didn't want to spend a weekend with a designer/artist looking over their shoulder waiting for stuff to get done). But somehow the game ended up more perhaps more digital than boardgamey.

HeronNet is an augmented reality game that requires you to sign up at heronet.dk in order to become a true reallife superhero. The goal is to accumulate either prestige or notoriety, depending on whether you wanted to be a superhero or a supervillain.

So the rules of the game is to sign-up and then create deeds on the website, which gives you an URL, which then in turn you need to spread out. The catch is that you need to spread it out anonymously, since superheroes can't expose their true identity. So perhaps you could do good deeds such as giving out free candy and leaving you URL at the candy, people would then go to the URL and give you either prestige or notoriety. If someone knows your true identity, they can go to the website and expose you, destroying your hero profile and collecting all your points.

Our goal with the game was to create a game, people were always part of (like Assasin) but without inducing fear and paranoia. And also make people do small good deeds around and spread a little happiness.

We didn't win anything at the game jam, which was expected I guess, since it was probably disqualified for not being a boardgame, but we had comments on the fact that it would a really interesting social experiment, so I suppose that's cool.

But anyway, humanity is suffering while I write this post, so go the heronet.dk and create your hero... NOW!

Neno, art

2011-01-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is a fraction of the art created for Neno.

Assortment of objects to be found in the game (there was an average of around 20-25 unique objects in each level with five levels in total, which equals a lot of assets!). Some of the objects had animation and some were moving still images (or stationary)

The complete five levels in a coherent environment.

The first level was a forest and floating circus level, with a girl being the go to point of interest as she would give you a new balloon.
Second level is skyscraper islands with a bag lady as the balloon stall. She makes balloons out of plastic bags.
Third level consists cliffs and has a mythological settings with objects appearing like pegasus, angels, centaurs and so on. Point of interest is Daedalus who is looking for his son Icarus. The player gets a metal balloon in order to move on.
Fourth level is a space pirate battle. The balloon stall here is a sailor who has been thrown aboard due to his betrayal towards his crew. However he stole their underpants and has made balloons out of them.
Fifth and final level is a futuristic space hotel. There is a robot seller who will give the boy a ticket home on the StarXpress when he has done what she wants him to.

Reflections on: Neno

2011-01-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

Neno is the first game project I have worked on at Mediatechnology and Games (apparently just recently redubbed to Games). The game was made by team consisting of four people with a development phase of around two months, starting from mid-october 2010 and ending in mid-december 2010. My role in this team was designer, writer and artist.

Our vision was to create a browser game that was relaxing and explorative. The game is about a boy from space who has been accidently been left behind on earth by his parents and now he must, with the help of a balloon, make his way back to space. On his journey upwards, he must upgrade his balloon to a better one in order to be able to move all the way. Meeting all kinds of weird people with balloons, he helps them do whatever they needed to have done and they in return give him a new balloon.

The player is in charge of the wind and blows the boy around by mouse clicks. The main mechanic of the game is to collect objects, where objects that fly by their own power contribute towards updrift and objects that fall from the sky contribute to the opposite.

Positives:

Consistent artstyle. I pretty much had my way with the art, as I was the artist, which caused a lot of work, but at the same time I made sure I was happy with it. The artstyle is obviously consistent throughout due to the fact that only I had a hand in it. However I do realise at the same time that especially the later levels lacked a polish that was there at the first couple of levels. This was due to the fact that a) time was an issue and so the later levels were slightly rushed. b) the time issue also manifested itself in the programming department which made me lose motivation as I could tell my graphics weren't implemented the way I wanted it to. But despite this, I'm still satisfied with the graphics and I think they tell the story well enough.
Massive learning experience. I have learned a lot of do's and don't's during the development of this game. As this is the first game I've actually made with a team, I have obviously learned alot about team dynamics and how to communicate to a team consisting of people with very different backgrounds and tastes. Apart communication, one of the main things I have taken from this project is also an estimate of scale and project managing, which I feel is one of the main reasons why this game fell through (but more about that in the negatives section).
A very different game. Neno is a game that is fairly difficult to pin into a genre, which was what we were going for. One of the things we discussed in the group at the beginnning of the process was, that we did not want to make a platformer or a similar very tested genre, as it was perhaps the easy way out. So we instead went out to do something that wasn't seen very often, and although the game completely fell through, I am still happy about our choice. Rather do something new and fail, than doing something old and do it ok (not great, as I believe it is not in our capabilities to do an outstanding platformer, or at least not in my capabilities as a designer(I generally have a problem with sidescrolling platformers, playing them and designing them)).

Negatives

Disjointed design. The design of Neno is completely disjointed and renders the game slightly unplayable actually. Our first thoughts with the game was to make something that relied heavily on mechanic, but as we redesigned the game somehow we felt the need to insert a bit of narrative to explain goals and assert motivations. Another reason why narrative suddenly grew so big in our game was because the original plan was to not have a "level"-based progression but rather a fluid experience throughout the game without any "clear" goals, like a sandbox. However there were disagreements in the group whether this approach would be a good game or not and we ended up putting in levelling points and so on. This in turn sparked a lot of narrative and we suddenly had to explain why and what the player had to do in the game, which turned it into a fairly adventure-esque kind of game. But still the game had a very strange controlscheme where the player has limited control which works against the adventure-feel the game ended up having. All in all, a very disjointed game in many ways.
Out of scope and nowhere near polished. This game started within scope, but suddenly exploded in all kind of directions very quickly. The narrative grew gigantic which caused the scripting to grow which in turn made our programmer very busy. The levels also grew from being one screensize wide and only scrolling vertically to several screen sizes wide and with wrapping, this is something that was felt in the programming department, and the wrapping didn't properly until the last week, which is not good enough. I'm probably most unhappy about this, as I feel we probably still could be in scope and provided a tighter experience if the level sizes were kept smaller, but our keyword of exploration and a narrow level structure didn't sit well with the other members. I think it also grew out of scale due to the fact that we weren't sure who we were designing this game for, which leads to the next point.
In-team communication wasn't clear enough. This is quite possibly the culprit for our shortcomings in the game. We had not formulated our goals clear enough from the beginning which caused us to design for ourselves. Big mistake, as we had very different tastes as regards to what makes a good game. I like a sandbox experience and have a more toylike approach towards games compared to some of the other members who preferred a very competitive and challenge based experience. This caused the game to go from casual browser (which was very me) to a game that grew too big and heavy for a browser, although with time and redesign the concept would probably still have worked in some way. What we should have done was to formulate very clear goals, such as audience, technology, platform and our personal intentions. This would have focalized our game and contributed towards tighter design as we would be working towards the same goal.

Massive post, but the game itself is pretty massive compared to other stuff I have made.
The game is close to unplayable due to many factors. However I will treat this mainly as a learning experience and I am happy that we chose to do something difficult and try to think of completely new mechanics rather than relying on a set of used and tested one and modifying those. (Although I have absolutely no problem with people who do this as long as they do it well)

In development: The dictator (working title)

2010-12-21T11:10:00.000-08:00

So this is the current AGS-project I'm working on at the moment.

The "enigmatic" ruler of a small tropical island banana republic is being overthrown by the people. Apparently they do not understand the true reason why the president has been flushing the state finances, being of course that he has taken it upon himself to personally protect the island assets in case of an emergency. Such as a hack-attack draining the island funds or war.
However the people do not know what is the best for them and is now trying to overthrow the president. Help him out!

The game is a traditional point-and-click adventure and development progress so far is: Design and puzzles are about 100 % complete, however everything else is kind of pending and I haven't started any scripting yet, as I don't have any art yet.

But... here's sketches of the unnamed president.

Reflections on: Hello Neighbor!

2010-12-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Neighbor! was my second fully developed game and was made for an assignment in my class. The assignment was basically just to fully create (involving) coding a game by yourself. The development time of this game was less than a month, starting about end of september and releasing in mid-october 2010.

The game was made in the AGS-engine, as it was the only programming experience I had and I didn't feel like I wanted (or could) learn a new programming language in the short amount of time, I had to make this game.

It's a very short puzzle-exploration game about making the residents of a small apartment block interact with each other.

Positives:

Complete. By which I mean that I am happy with the completion level of this game. The artstyle was consistent (although again, not very pretty, and also kept in the same vein as The wife who wasn't there in order for me to save time and recycle some interface elements) and also every single action in the game had a unique feedback. This took me quite a lot of time to think of all the different reactions but I'm happy that I did, rather than just copy/pasting the reactions. I like to think the player will be more tempted towards playing again, knowing that all the reactions are different from each other.
Within scope. This is the first game, I've developed with a deadline, so I am happy I managed to set up scope for the project that I allowed me to complete and polish the game. Instead of just barely managing.
From scratch. This was also the first game I created from scratch (coding wise) as I used a template for The wife who wasn't there. This boosted my confidence slightly in the coding department and also makes me willing to try and learn other programming languages rather than being afraid of coding, as I was before.

Negatives:

Lack of motivation. The game lacks a motivating factor. When I conceptualised the game I thought: "Of course, people will play and find this game interesting." However this was based on the fact that I thought the different reactions of the residents would be enough to entice player to explore the game. Originally there were also far more residents rather than just six, which of course makes the amount of unique solutions even bigger, but as I scaled the game down and tested it myself, I realised that reading the responses might not be that great. So I introduced the cheap solution of a trophy/achievement system, which actually did the trick and afforded multiple plays, which had been my goal.
Lack of sound. There is not a lot of sound in this game, and sounds and music in general are not my strongest points. The lack of sound makes the game rather "empty", although the little sound I did have in the game, I was happy with, as it conveyed the theme and simplicity of the game, I was especially happy with the whistling my brother did for me in the main menu. However the lack of sound is still a bit disappointing, and I probably should invest a bit more time in this department in the future.
Consistent (but yet slightly boring) artstyle. I was very happy with the consistency of the artstyle, but yet with such a simple game as Hello Neighbor! is, it comes off as a bit boring. But I stuck with this artstyle due to the fact that it is fast and also because it allowed me to recycle art from The wife who wasn't there. However I feel now that perhaps I should have tried a different artstyle for this game, as it is so simple and consists of not that many assets. A more exciting artstyle would probably have improved the experience of this game immensely.

Overall I'm happy with this game. It's not very big or very beautiful, but it is complete, simple and easy to get into and also it afforded some replayability (not much though) which I am happy with. Also I was within scope which is good and this also gives me some sort of insight into my ability in regards to the time I need to finish games.

In development: The balloon game (working title)

2010-11-29T09:43:00.000-08:00

So this is the game I'm currently working on at MTG. We're reaching the final stages of development with only about two weeks to go before deadline. The team consists of Jens Højlund Lauridsen, Troels Frostholm Mogensen, Emil Norsk-Nielsen and myself.

Basically it's a browser game about a boy from space who has been left behind on earth, with the help of a balloon and people he meets on the way, he will now try to make his way back to his home planet.

I am completely in charge of art in this game which reflects in a rather childlike and innocent artstyle, taking a bit inspiration from Paper Mario (with the white borders of objects) as well as Yoshi's Story with a fairly flat and significantly different background.

In the earlier concept art, the boy as well as the general look of items had a thick black outline whereas background objects (such as the island beneath) had a watercolor painted style. However the black outline caused problems as the blue background got darker further up making it impossible to see the outline. This is why we/I ended up going for the white paper cut-outs.

The background also changed from the impressionistic painted to a more stylistic shaded look (compare between the island in picture 2 and the background, picture 4). The reason for this was partly because the new look afforded more detail, I was inspired by drawings from another member of the team and also because I couldn't find the brush I had used earlier for the impressionistic look.

Reflections on: The wife who wasn't there

2010-11-25T15:04:00.000-08:00

The wife who wasn't there was my first fully developed game about a husband who came home from work only to find that his wife was gone.

The game is a fairly traditional point and click adventure game made in the Adventure Game Studio engine by Chris Jones. The development time of this game was about 8 months on/off, starting with concept development and puzzle planning from september 2009 (although the story idea was from 2008), actual production (writing/scripting/drawing) from january 2010 and published on bigbluecup.com in late April 2010.

Positives:

An experience and proof to myself that I could actually make a game. This game definately boosted my confidence as designer.
General good feedback on the puzzles. This was something I was very worried about, since I didn't have a lot of confidence in my puzzle-designing skills, so it meant a great deal to me that players could figure out how to solve the puzzles and that they were logical and apparently also easy. However easy is not a bad thing in my book, as I think there is nothing worse than being stuck at a puzzle in an adventure game.
Consistent artstyle. This is something I spent a lot of time on, making every single item, button and cursor look consistent, so I was rather happy it was acknowledged. It might not be the prettiest game, but it looks like it all comes from the same universe, and communicates my ideas and also the simplicity of the story.

Negatives:

Lack of visual distinction between interactive vs. non-interactive objects. This partly comes down to the artstyle which doesn't differentiate between different kinds of objects but also because I didn't think of adding a rollover function on the objects. So the player would actually have to click objects to know whether an object can be interacted with or not.
Some weak puzzles. Even though I did get good feedback on the puzzles, there were still some weak ones around. Such as "non-existent puzzles" puzzles which are basically not puzzles but rather something the player randomly stumbles upon and solves without any involvement except clicking on an object.
Lack of direction. This was something I noticed when watching my cousins play as they didn't really understand what they were supposed to do when the game started. I believe this is due to a lack of information at the beginnning and the motive to play the game might not be clear enough in the game itself. (The motive being, that the husband has to remember what his wife told him yesterday)
Room design was slightly icky. By this I mean that not all rooms had apparent exit/entrance ways, so players didn't always know if walking to the edge of the screen would lead to another room or to nowhere. This would probably be improved with some sort of visual clue, for example doors or carpets leading off the screen.

Overall I was/am satisfied with this game despite it's many flaws, it was a good learning experience and I have learned both to keep a consistent artstyle but also how to use the AGS engine, which makes me more prepped towards doing more adventure games. I've also gained quite a lot of confidence in my puzzle-designing skills and quite a lot of do's and dont's for the games I'm working on now and for the future.

Hello world!

2010-11-25T13:06:00.000-08:00

So...

I've jumped on the bandwagon and decided to start a blog.

This blog will mostly be used as developing diary for the games, I'm working (or should be working) on, and I suppose venting out the progress (probably only to myself) will possibly help the development move along.

I'm hoping this blog will also be useful as a reflection tool, as I usually don't reflect (at least formally) on what I do and have done. Putting my thoughts down in blogform probably help force me to think about things I normally just gloss over.

Lastly, if anyone actually reads this blog then: Hello to you! And I hope this blog makes an interesting read.

And here's a penguin.