One of the aspects that I think is fun about this game is it is broken into three different fast-paced stages:

First, you start off with a jetpack way above your city–collecting ammo and avoiding falling bombs. Second, you pull your parachute and float down collecting more resources while avoiding other obstacles. Third and finally, you land on the ground and use the ammo and power ups you collected on your way down to shoot the bombs that are now falling on your city.

There are 10 increasingly difficult waves to defeat as well as a modest upgrade shop in between waves.

Here is a gameplay trailer:

Give it a play and let me know what you think, thanks!

(You can also play the game on Kongregate or Newgrounds if you’d like.)

I’d like to thank Rick from Hairy Games for sponsoring the viral version of Bomb Diver. He has been great to work with!

Oops!..I Got Married Again

Aw, Britney – ready for love again! And only two minutes to make it to the altar! But what is all this…baggage? Cheetos, ex boyfriends, and delicious snacks! Fortunately, there are a few powerups to make this wedding happen. All the cheezy puffs in the world can not stand in the way of love!

I finished up a contract viral news game for MTV’s Addicting Games portal this past week. The topic of the game was Britney Spears’ upcoming wedding tomorrow on Valentine’s Day at an undisclosed tropical destination.

I was responsible for creating all of the art, as well as any programming required for the game engine.

One of my favorite highlights was getting to create a power up where Britney gets to surf on the famous snake from the VMA music awards! There are three other silly power ups as well that were modeled from her various music videos and tours.

The fine folks over at Addicting Games provided some humorous voice acting for the various in-game characters too.

Give it a try over at Addicting Games and see if you can get Britney to the “altar” in time.

Korrode is a brand new game that I have just finished. You get to play the part of entropy as a racing rust spot zipping around corroding metal bolts. It’s a level based racer that combines aspects of puzzle and time trial agility games.

My initial seed of an idea for the game was about crossing a 2d Katamari Damacy with Flow. The game has also drawn heavy comparisons to the excellent game Osmos but I had never heard of that game before beta test players started pointing that out. I wanted to explore the fun level design that would occur in a game where the level topology is constantly changing based on your scale.

The game isn’t released yet but I created a video game trailer so players and potential sponsors could get a sneak peek at what it is all about. Sponsors with an account on Flash Game License can also play the game here to consider placing a bid on it.

I’ve worked on Korrode on and off since January of this year. It is the largest game in both scope and time commitment that I’ve developed yet. I was very inspired by some entropy-themed texture photos a good friend of mine (Jeremy P. Bushnell) took from his travels around Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. He gave me permission to use these photos as the base for a lot of the photo manipulation work I did to create both the UI and the levels for the game.

I also had the pleasure of recording the game’s soundtrack which was a refreshing break from coding. I was able to create 9 unique music loops using the sounds of factories, metal clanging, machines, and other industrial ephemera to build the rhythm tracks. I then composed some simple melodies to go over them. The trailer features a longer version of one of the songs from the game.

The game uses a pretty cool technology from the Playtomic analytic service I use that allows me to embed player replays in the actual highscore data for a level. This means that when a player finishes playing a level their new best time is automatically submitted to the global leaderboards for that level. Then when players view the leaderboards they can actually watch the replays from anyone’s run in the score charts. It’s a great way to encourage competition and allow the players to race each other’s replay “ghosts” after they finish watching the replays. It also provides a built in walk through of sorts if player’s are just curious how other people solved a level in the quickest time.

I’m pretty excited about this game and I really can’t wait to see the replays that top players will generate. I’ve already learned a bunch about the levels I designed by watching the beta testers solve them! The sponsorship process can take awhile though so I have to be patient. I’ve got plenty of other projects to keep me occupied anyway!

I had the good fortune to be able to attend GameLoop in Boston again this year. It was held at the Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA and about 150 folks attended. This was GameLoop’s fourth year and it continues to draw a great group of participants interested in all aspects of game development–both digital and non-digital. The event is priced ridiculously low for the amount of value you get out of it in both shared knowledge and networking. The $40 ticket price even includes a kick-ass T-shirt, breakfast, and lunch!

GameLoop was founded by Darius Kazemi and Scott Macmillan and they continue to help both organize it and refine its unconference style process.

For those unfamiliar with the unconference term, the gist is that an unconference is a type of conference that self-organizes during the day of the event.

The participants of an unconference are active co-creators of the session content. Sessions are proposed in the beginning of the day with attendees gathered in a large room.

This year we all had a chance to say three tags that represented topics we were interested in. There was a 10 second time limit and it only took 15 minutes to get through us all. This helped gauge the potential topic interests in the room.

After all the proposed sessions have been written onto large pieces of paper the boards holding them are then moved out to the hallway. Participants then get to vote with 5 individual stickers on which sessions they might want to attend.

This was still a bit of a bottleneck but I felt it worked better than last year. I hope next year they have 3 boards instead of 2 and keep the notes to the top halves of the boards so you can preview the topics from further away.  I also think putting more space between the boards will help spread out the crowd a bit.

After we all voted the organizers then curate the most popular sessions to form the schedule by distributing or combining the topics in an intelligent manner to get good coverage throughout the day. I thought this curated approach worked really well this year. Each slot had something I could find that interested me.

Sessions tend to be a round-table conversation-based style where everyone can have a chance to contribute to the topic being discussed. The session leader is whoever proposed the topic and moderators are available to help out just in case things veer too far.

This whole process works surprisingly well! There is even a brief wrap-up session at then end of the conference where the whole group is able to provide feedback so that iterative improvements to the process can made for next year’s event.

The three tags I announced at the beginning of the event this year were web, mobile, and small studio business.  I then attended sessions that largely related to these topics. I enjoyed two different sessions related to indie business and marketing lead by Ichiro Lambe and Leo Jaitley of Dejobaan Games. I find a lot of useful stories and information in what those two have to share about their long term experiences with being an independent game studio that has released a lot of very original games over the past twelve years. The sessions they lead were titled Platforms That Make Indies Money and Staying in Business as an Indie Forever. Other useful contributions came from participants like David Carrigg of Retro Affect and Alex Schwartz of Owlchemy Labs. They all had experiences to share and it was very useful to hear what various studios are doing to stay in business and try and make money from their games.

I also attended a more tech oriented session lead by Sean Flinn of GameSpy Technology (thankfully a long term GameLoop sponsor) about online analytics, multiplayer, and distribution needs of game developers. I have a very big interest in game analytics and currently use the Playtomic service but it is always good to keep an eye on the various technologies out there. GameSpy Technology doesn’t currently have an ActionScript API but I was able to share some of my needs, concerns, and requirements with them about being a game developer on the web.

Of the two final sessions I attended, one was a session on Building a Personal Brand by Kwasi Mensah of Ananse Productions and the other a session on Prototyping by Caleb Garner of Part12 Studios. I find these conversation style sessions so helpful to hear other game developers stories and experiences. Afterward you can approach and followup with someone based on what you heard them talking about in the session and that is an excellent chance for further building connections.

After a long but incredibly rewarding day about 70 of us headed over to Cambridge Brewing Company for dinner and locally brewed beer. A perfect way to end the day!

Once again I would like to thank the founders of GameLoop–Darius Kazemi and Scott Macmillan. I think the following photo may hint at where they get all their incredible energy from!

All photos used by permission of Michael Carriere.

These games have been available as free downloads since the store launched with the release of the new PlayBook tablet.

I ran a report on the total number of downloads from all six games over the past three months of time. I also gathered my analytics data from the Playtomic service which I used on each game to track views, plays (number of plays per view), and average playtime length per view. I also used Playtomic to provide the global leaderboards.

Using this data I built the following graphic (click to enlarge):

I should also mention that five of these six games have been fairly popular and all within the top 25 lists of their respective free categories. They’ve all been well reviewed (when reviewed at all) and I’ve done next to no promotion of them. These downloads basically represent players discovering the games through the PlayBook AppWorld interface.

You’ll note that I tracked the review percentage. This represents the amount of reviews I received per game based on the number of downloads.

It was pretty easy to convert my existing Flash games over to work on the PlayBook. Besides receiving a free PlayBook for the first game as part of BlackBerry’s launch promotion I was also fortunate enough to be compensated as part of a contract for my conversion on the other five games too. This allowed me to release them for free to study the market in the most favorable of download circumstances.

That said, if I wasn’t being compensated for my efforts I would not find these numbers to be very encouraging at all! Each game was only downloaded an average of 1300 times.  That number would be far, far smaller if I was charging for these games. That is not a good indication that I’ll be attempting to pursue this market further unless new changes or information comes to light–I simply can’t afford to make that kind of super risky business decision with my time.

I’ve enjoyed the free PlayBook I received from BlackBerry. It is the first tablet I’ve owned and it seems to be a fine enough device. I am not a heavy tablet user though and have little to compare it to besides having used an iPad for a bit. I’d be curious to see other developer’s download numbers (and even sales data) on the PlayBook device. Anyone making any money?

Game Description:

Angry birds? Try angry pigeon! You play a French pigeon that has had it with all the crowds and traffic generated by le Tour de France. You set out to disrupt the last two minutes of the bicycle race the only way you know how–by pooping all over the place! Cause massive pileups with the power of pigeon poop!

Play le Turd de France!

Additional Screenshots:

Here you have just acquired the Mega Poop powerup!

Unleashing the fury of the Mega Poop!

Scoring a sweet triple direct hit! Direct hits increase your multiplier and let you score big.

The race is wrapping up! I’m pretty sure you made your point with the bicyclists…

The race has finished! Here you can review all those critical race stats.

Background:

This game was a very silly collaboration I did together with fellow game designer Joshua A.C. Newman of the glyphpress. It was inspired by his friend Judith Shaw who got pooped on by a pigeon while riding her bicycle. Joshua is an avid bicyclist and he contacted me to see if I wanted to help bring that incident to life as a video game.

We thought basing it around le Tour de France would be a funny way to provide a setting with plenty of opportunity for humor.

Of technical interest would be the fact that the peloton of bicycle racers is controlled by a heavily customized version of Boid’s flocking algorithm. Each biker dodges the poop splats on the ground as well as the road edges and the other bikers–all the while trying to reach a target point toward the right of the screen. I also added a 5-state internal bicyclist model that controls their stamina and energy and allows them to try to reach the front of the peleton before tiring out and drifting to the back of the pack.  It took a few days of heavy playtesting to tune the flock algorithm just right to make it fun but it is so great to watch that the intense effort was well worth it!

Give it a play over at AddictingGames!

This game is my most ambitious so far containing 40 levels arranged into 4 different difficulty groups.  This is also the first level design I’ve done for a game as most of my previous games have been more on the procedural or arcade side of things where game variables just sort of change over time to introduce new enemies or difficulties but there aren’t distinct levels. The gameplay combines aspects of puzzles, agility, and time trials.

I wanted to post some composite before/after screenshots I made of the new graphics overhaul:

Level 2-5

Level 2-8

Level 3-6

Level 4-3

I’m now getting into the “last 10%” stage of this game. There are still many miscellaneous tasks for me to complete like sound effects, music soundtrack, social features, menu features, further testing and polish.  It is getting close though to the point where I’ll be able to present it to sponsors. Always an exciting stage for a game to be at. I can clearly see the light at the end of the tunnel on this game and I can’t wait for the day when I can let the players in!

Game Description:

Good Prince William is to wed the darling Kate this very day. But he is on the other side of town! This simply will not do. Run to meet your bride, ducking old girlfriends and paparazzi on the way. Be sure to grab your princely powerups. Release the Hounds!

Additional Screenshots:

Here William leaps over an ex-girlfriend. He’ll have to dodge that paparazzi too!

William has reached Kate with 22 seconds to spare. The crowds at Westminster Abbey go wild!

Background:

Royal Wedding Run is a viral news game I was contracted by MTV to make for their AddictingGames arcade portal. The news event was the wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton on April 29th, 2011.  The game is extremely silly and had a lot of humorous voice acting performed by various folks at MTV. I was responsible for the programming of the game and the artist was the talented Eric Falk.

Come2Play and the Linkedin Flash Game Developers Group are launching the 2nd ‘Games that Challenge the World Contest’ for multiplayer games. Cash prizes totaling $10,000 will be awarded to contest winners.

Developers keep all rights to the games they submit and even previously released games can be entered.

There was only a handful of entries to last years contest, so the chance of winning a serious cash prize is very high. Check out the winning entries of the 1st ‘Games that Challenge the World Contest.’

If you’ve got a multiplayer game and you think you stand a chance of winning, why not submit your game?

Prizes:

• 1st Place – $5,000
• 2nd Place – $3,000
• 3rd Place – $1,250
• 4th Place – $750

Contest Genre & Judging:

The contest genre is Casual Games and submissions will be judged on the following criteria:

• Multiplayer playability for new and return players
• Replay ability of the game
• Design, sound and effects
• Concept and execution

Deadline:

All games must be integrated with the Come2Play multiplayer API in order to be officially accepted into the contest. All games must be submitted by April 15th, 2011 at 23:59 est. Games submitted on this date must be the final version of all games.

The full details are available at the official contest page.

Robot Reaction was one of my Flash games from 2009 that I completely rewrote to work with the Flash CS5 Beta program. I was able to use the iPhone Packager for CS5 to get my first game into the Apple App Store.  It was a great learning experience in old school optimization techniques like bitmap blitting as well as a sobering business look at how hard it can be to make any money in the App Store vs the Flash business space I was familiar with.

Play Robot Reaction!

While I was out at the Flash Gaming Summit and the Game Developers Conference I got to meet up with the fine folks over at the Kongregate office in San Francisco to hatch out plans for an advergame for Cheetos and Frito Lay. It was my first foray into contract advergame work and I had a great time working to create this game.  It was based off of my Orange You Glad game that people at Cheetos had spotted over on Kongregate and wanted me to create a custom version with the Cheetos theme.

Play Mouth Full of Happy!

Feeling a lot of inspiration after my return from the Indie Gaming Summit at the Game Developers Conference I wanted to get more involved in some of the online game competitions that were run monthly over at the Experimental Gameplay Project. Contentric was created in a week for the EGP theme of You Only Have 10 Seconds and I was quite happy with the result. I was even more pleased when Armor Games decided to sponsor it!

Play Contentric!

Next on my hit list was the desire to finally participate in one of the competitions over at the TIGSource forums. There was a new month long competition being run with the theme of A Game By It’s Cover that had a fascinating concept to me. We were to pick a fake game cartridge whose art inspired us to think up an actual game based on the fake art. For The Twin was what I managed to come up with by using this case art.  Besides creating a lot of creepy cute art and backgrounds for the game I also composed seven faux chiptune loops in Reason for the game that came out quite well. The game ended up being sponsored by Spil Games and was played over one million times in the first month alone–a new milestone for me!

Play For The Twin!

The last game I published in 2010 was initially created for the 18th Ludum Dare 48hr game competition theme of Enemies as Weapons and polished up for the Experimental Gameplay Project theme of Zero Buttons. I went with a retro look and classic arcade gameplay for this challenging avoider collector mouse skills game. I then spent the month of October working on a final version of the game for the Ludum Dare October Challenge to sell a game in a month. Newgrounds ended up sponsoring AVOIDAL and I got to create a bunch of medal achievements that were pretty fun to try and win.

Play AVOIDAL!

I also found it insightful to take a look at all the games I worked on yet did not manage to publish for one reason or another. Many of these games are still on my todo list for 2011 and will see the light of day eventually.  Digging through my directories I discovered that I had worked on a total of 12 games this year while only publishing 5. I’m not sure if that is good or bad but it is worth keeping on eye on since I do believe in trying to finish games in order to get the most experience and value from them.

I had attempted to learn an early version of Flash Punk and I found it to be a really great Flash game framework. My efforts stalled out though with this untitled retro dodge game and I still have to learn the newest version.

I made a game in two hours for one of the crazy Glorious Trainwrecks Klik of the Month Klub #35 events called Wizards vs Ghosts which I find amusing.  Creating a game in only two hours is truly mind breaking!

I”m still actively working on a final expanded version of my 2009 Ludum Dare game called Angry Caverns and a 2009 Ludum Dare game called Fleedom. I’m still developing a pixel art arcade game called Bomb Diver as well as collaborating with another game designer/artist on a ridiculous game about pooping pigeons and bicycles.

A few of the random things I am happy about from 2010 include finally getting to go to my first Game Developers Conference as well as attending the Flash Gaming Summit the Sunday before GDC. It was a truly inspiring week spent in San Francisco and I met so many awesome game developers and Flash publishers. I am really looking forward to returning again this year.

Another great milestone was getting a New Hampshire LLC for Hybrid Mind Studios so it is all official and everything.

On the competition side of things I managed to host my first Mini Ludum Dare event around the theme of Constraints which I felt had a great turnout of submitted games and was fairly well received by the community. My game Alien Flight Academy – Graduation Day was the result of that competition. A bizarre experiment in alternate keyboard controls.

As I mentioned previously I finally had a Flash game break the one million views mark. It was a simple milestone I had looked forward to finally achieving.  2010 marks my second full year releasing Flash games and it is so amazing to look back at my first Flash game TurnStyle which was released in Feb of 2009 and only ever got about 150k plays total and compare that to my more recent games that reach millions. That fact just continues to floor me. I never dreamed that I might be able to reach such a large audience with my games, art, and music! The Flash game space offers game designers an amazing distribution opportunity that I find very inspiring, humbling, and flattering all at the same time. I look forward to trying to reach more and more people as I improve my craft.

Determined to get more involved in the local game development community around Boston I started attending monthly Boston Indies meetups and the local Boston Game Loop conference. I even started up a weekly game development co-work meetup down in Cambridge, MA at Sprout for three months to help myself meet other area game developers. It’s been great getting to know so many fine people in my neck of the woods.

Along the same lines as getting involved more locally–near the end of 2010 I had the good opportunity to take part in my first team game jam too! I was at a Boston Game Jam event called Lunar Jam and I helped out primarily as the artist doing many black and white illustrations for a choose your own adventure type visual novel game called Perchance to Dream that is still in development.

I’ve managed to work with great portals like Armor Games, Big Fish Games, Newgrounds, Kongregate, King, Spil, Addicting Games and many others. Each new relationship I establish helps me to feel more comfortable that I’ll be able to continue doing independent game development full time–my childhood dream!

Looking at what I have planned for 2011 is pretty exciting to me. There are many games I’ve been working on that are nearing completion that I can’t wait to publish to see what the players think. I also want to collaborate more with other game designers, artists, musicians, and programmers. I plan to keep attending conferences like the Flash Gaming Summit and the Game Developers Conference as well as other regional and local events. I hope to keep learning new technologies, skills, and game design techniques. I look forward to building my relationships with other game developers. I have so many game ideas that the lists are growing out of control. I hope I can manage to stay focused and driven enough to get even a tenth of these new ideas out. I can’t wait to see what 2011 holds for myself as well as the other game developers out there.

Bring on the games!