Sketches: John the Stalker

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

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

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

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

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.

In development: The date

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

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.