The main concept is that the player’s actions effect the movement of the blocks to be avoided. This in essence makes the player their own worst enemy. I was experimenting around with nested spring feedback systems and this concept of player as AI when I stumbled upon a fun and playable prototype that went on to become this game.

I spent about 7 days developing the version I submitted to the Experimental Gameplay Project website and then I worked for a bit longer polishing it up to get it ready to seek sponsorship.  I’m happy to report that Armor Games picked up the primary sponsorship on it and Contentric officially launched yesterday!

It was great to work with Dan from Armor Games and I definitely recommend them to any other flash developers out there who are looking for a good sponsor.

I’m really quite happy with how this game came together.  I was able to get a ton of playtesting feedback early on which really helped me perfect the gameplay to where I wanted it.  I also got to write the music for the game which people seem to be enjoying as well so that is always a treat.

Here is a gameplay trailer I put together with some rough edits that show me getting a little over 13,000 points.

As usual I welcome any feedback positive or negative and would love to hear from you.

Dave has been too busy in the game development trenches to update this blog recently so as an ambitious underling I am stepping up. If I do a good job perhaps I won’t be vaporized at the end of the day!

What has been going on lately? Well–many things!

Hybrid Mind Studios is now officially an LLC. Dave was excited to take that step this February after a successful first year in 2009 that saw the release of six Flash games and one iPhone game.

Since his return in March from the Flash Gaming Summit and the Game Developers Conference Dave has been hard at work on three new games.

Two of these games have been finished and will be launching any day now.  The third game still requires a bit more time in the oven though.

Dave did have a chance to tell me that both the Flash Gaming Summit and the Independent Games Summit in March really inspired him and made him thankful to be part of such an exciting profession!

He got to meet many fellow independent game developers as well as meet many of the publishers that have sponsored or licensed his games over the past year. That was quite a treat as normally there is little face to face contact when working from a home office.

Well–that’s all I have time for this morning. There will be more updates soon as the new games fire from the studio launch tubes. Let’s hope I don’t get vaporized for taking the initiative and updating this blog for Dave!

My Flash game Robot Reaction is now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

You can play the free Flash version of the iPhone game at robotreaction.com and buy the game for 99 cents in the App Store. I worked on the iPhone version in collaboration with One App At A Time.

The goal is to try and blow up as many robots as you can in ten fast paced rounds. There are six different robot types which all explode in different ways.

Here is a gameplay video of the iPhone version in action:

Concept:

Help the atom on each level recover its lost electrons! You only have 60 seconds total to collect all 100 missing electrons from the different levels.

The screenshot above shows 4 of the 20 available levels.  10 levels are picked at random each time you play.  The entire game only lasts 60 seconds (as per the contest rules.)

I created the background textures by cropping and filtering some lovely watercolor textures made by Hillary Luetkemeyer.  The artist released them for use and remix under a CC Attribution license.

Feel free to leave any feedback below in the comments.

Play Power Vacuum

I’ve spent some time over the last week helping my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P Bushnell compile a list of historically important video games.

Jeremy has been teaching a Writing course at Boston University on the topic of “Playing Games: How Video Games Work and What They Mean.”

In his discussions with the students about the concept of historical analysis: analyzing video games based on how they “fit” into the context of a developing timeline of games, he had a chance to create an initial list of about 40 games.

This list was then passed around between our friends and associates as well as being shared with his two classes of about forty students total.  Jeremy encouraged his students to confront and challenge the games on this list as well as suggest ones they felt should be included.  They even got to write persuasive papers as an assignment to get a game included on the list.  If the argument was convincing enough they even received some extra credit for making the list.

Jeremy and I discussed some of the more convincing papers and kicked our thoughts back and forth on what made these games historically significant. It was a lot of fun and very interesting to get to consider where videos games have come from (with Spacewar in 1961) up through to the present day.  It was a challenge to pick games not for being good or popular necessarily but for their historical significance.

The finished list (reposted with permission) now stands at 64 chronological games (a nice power of 2) and includes justifications for why each game was included:

64 Important Games From Video Game History version 2.0

1. 1961     Spacewar, first digital game / first shooter / first two-player game
2. 1971     Oregon Trail, landmark educational game (designed in 1971, produced in 1974, re-released in 1985, 1992, 2001, 2008, and 2009)
3. 1972     Pong, first commercially-successful arcade game / first sports simulation, also first digital game released for the home market (1975)
4. 1974     Gran Trak 10, first racing game
5. 1976     [Colossal Cave] Adventure, first adventure game
6. 1976     Breakout, landmark arcade game
7. 1977     Night Racer, first first-person racing game
8. 1978     Space Invaders, first commercially-successful shoot-em-up (160,000 copies sold)
9. 1978     Atari Football, landmark sports simulation game
10. 1979     Asteroids, landmark shoot-em-up
11. 1979     Adventure, first action-adventure game
12. 1980     Zork, landmark text adventure game
13. 1980     Space Panic, first platformer
14. 1980     Pac-Man, landmark arcade game (350,000 units sold)
15. 1980     Rogue, early graphical adventure game
16. 1981     Donkey Kong, landmark platformer (60,000 units sold), also the first game to tell a complete (embedded) narrative
17. 1982     Pole Position, landmark racing game
18. 1983     Intellivision World Series Baseball, first 3-D sports simulation, also the first sports simulation to use multiple camera angles to emphasize action
19. 1983     Ultima III, landmark PC role-playing game
20. 1983     Lode Runner, landmark platformer, plus an early game permitting the creation of user-generated levels
21. 1983     Pinball Construction Set, an early game permitting the creation of user-generated content
22. 1984     Tetris, landmark abstract puzzle game
23. 1985     Gauntlet, landmark multi-player game
24. 1985     Super Mario Bros., landmark 2-D side-scrolling platformer (forty million copies sold)
25. 1986     Air Warrior, first multi-player online game with graphics
26. 1987     Earl Weaver Baseball, landmark sports simulation
27. 1987-8    Street Fighter / Street Fighter II, landmark one-on-one competitive fighting games
28. 1987     The Legend of Zelda, landmark adventure game, also the first home cartridge to permit saving, also a good early example of a game which permitted non-linear play
29. 1989     SimCity, landmark developer simulation
30. 1990     Microsoft Solitaire, landmark casual game
31. 1990     Minesweeper, landmark casual / puzzle game
32. 1990     John Madden Football, landmark sports simulation
33. 1991     Civilization, landmark turn-based strategy game
34. 1991     Neverwinter Nights, first multi-player online role-playing game to display graphics
35. 1991     Final Fantasy IV, landmark console role-playing game
36. 1991     Myst, landmark adventure game (six million copies sold)
37. 1992     Wolfenstein 3-D, first commercially-successful first-person shooter
38. 1992     Mortal Kombat, landmark fighting game
39. 1992     The Incredible Machine, early physics game
40. 1992     Dune II, first real-time strategy game
41. 1993     Doom, landmark first-person shooter, also a good early example of an open-source game
42. 1995     Command and Conquer, landmark real-time strategy game
43. 1996     Quake, landmark first-person shooter, also a good early example of a game utilizing an online multiplayer mode
44. 1996     Super Mario 64, landmark 3-D platformer (eleven million copies sold)
45. 1996     Resident Evil, first survival horror game
46. 1996-8     Pokemon Red / Pokemon Blue, landmark RPG (eight million copies sold), also a good early example of a game with innovative multiplayer mechanics
47. 1997     Lego Island, first open-world game
48. 1997     Ultima Online, landmark multi-player online role-playing game (250,000 subscribers)
49. 1998     Dance Dance Revolution, landmark rhythm game / exercise game
50. 1998     Half-Life, landmark first-person shooter (eight million copies sold), also a landmark example of an open-source game
51. 1998     Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, first commercially-successful tactical shooter
52. 1998     Metal Gear Solid, first commercially-successful stealth game
53. 1998     Starcraft, landmark real-time strategy game
54. 1999     Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, landmark extreme sports simulation
55. 1999-2000    Counter-Strike, landmark mod, also a game making central use of online multiplayer technology
56. 2001     Bejeweled, landmark puzzle / casual game
57. 2001     Gran Turismo 3, landmark racing game
58. 2001     Grand Theft Auto III, landmark open-world game
59. 2002     The Sims, landmark life-simulation game (sixteen million copies sold), plus a game making central use of user-generated content
60. 2003     Diner Dash, landmark time-management game
61. 2004     Halo 2, landmark in online console gaming (four million subscribers)
62. 2004     World of Warcraft, landmark multi-player online role-playing game (over eleven million subscribers)
63. 2005     Guitar Hero, landmark rhythm game
64. 2006     Wii Sports, landmark sports simulation (forty-five million copies sold)

Your comments and arguments are welcome!

I have done a few illustrations for this game working through various game mechanics, styles, and ideas.

This is a useful creative tool for me to rapidly try out different concepts and see what they might look like before I even write a single line of code or start creating any game assets.

Creating concept art becomes a way I can immerse myself in the world and atmosphere of the game ahead of time because as I am drawing these illustrations I am imagining the various aspects of the gameplay occurring.  This can even include me making hand gestures and sound effects without me realizing it as I try out the game in my mind’s eye.  As embarrassing as that might sound for some people it has been something I’ve done unashamedly since I first started drawing as a child.  It makes the experience that much more involved and creatively useful for me.

The mechanics of the game are fluid and easy to change when I am prototyping with illustrations so I can work through many ideas quickly as I form my plan about what to implement in the first prototype. It also serves as a way to get myself psyched about the game and really feeling the emotion and experience I want to try and create for the player.

This latest game has been inspired by a specific title I came up with yesterday.  I’ve been brainstorming various game ideas for it and think I’ve finally settled on a concept I want to implement a prototype of. I’ll keep the title in reserve for now but I expect to make a few more updates along the development cycle.

If you are a game designer feel free to let me know a little about your creative process when you are beginning with a new game.  I have used many different approaches and there are obviously many ways to do it.  I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has used a concept art driven approach to good effect with their games.

I have just completed a new Flash game called Worderfall this month with my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P. Bushnell.  This time around it is a word game that utilizes an extremely large database of valid English words.

The concept is a fairly simple one.  You have three minutes to create as many high scoring words as you can.  The game increases pace with each minute that passes.  There are a ton of game statistics that are tracked as well for those who would like to improve their scores or at least measure their progress.

Here is a game play video which explains how to play:

Here is a game play screenshot:

I welcome your feedback and thoughts positive or negative.  Thanks for giving it a try!

My idea on the theme was that you play as the cavern.  You have to use your natural defenses like stalactites and steam vents to eliminate the creatures that have come to call you home.  In this version you are mainly facing off against bats and cavemen though in an expansion I hope to add in many time periods of history of various cavern dwellers and users.

Here is a scene from level 5.  There are currently only 5 levels in the game.  You have limited amount of time on each level to try and destroy as many creatures as you can.  There is a nice combo system and random bonus creatures that will help you go for some big points.  There is also a completion bonus with extra rewards for perfect completion.  To encourage some friendly competition I tied in MochiMedia’s excellent global leaderboard system and even wrote up a simple leaderboard tutorial ahead of the competition in case any other LD15 participants who used Flash wanted to give it a go.

Once again Ludum Dare was an absolute blast!  There was record turn out like last time and 144 games were submitted in total!  You can view the current game list here.  My LD15 dev blog can be viewed here too.

I used the Flash CS4 IDE to develop this game in Actionscript 3.0. I also used SFXR to generate the sound effects and composed the menu and level music in Reason.  You can even view a timelapse of my games 36 hours of creation compressed into 3 minutes!  Congrats to all the participants of Ludum Dare 15!

Click here to give Angry Caverns a try in your browser!

PLAY:

Play Blinkout

DESCRIPTION:
How good is your visual memory under pressure? You’ll have to use both your agility and good resource strategy to navigate your spaceship through an increasingly hostile dimension. How far can you get?

INSTRUCTIONS:

• Move ship with ARROWS
• Illuminate levels with the SPACEBAR (costs energy)
• Find the key and go to the gate
• Regain energy by picking up charges
• There are 8 levels that will repeat for 6 rounds. The charges are persistent across all rounds, so don’t use all of them the first time around…

MORE INFO:

I hope you’ll find Blinkout to be a fairly original game. The game is designed to challenge the player on quite a few levels and we believe that if players spend a little time with it they will find an interesting experience as the game mechanics change over the 6 rounds of 8 repeating level mazes.

The player will have to use their visual memory as most of the game is played in complete darkness. Illumination of the levels comes through collecting energy charges along the way. The catch is that these charges are persistent across all the rounds so a charge collected earlier will no longer be available when encountered again. Charges picked up later are worth more energy so the player will be able to manage their resources accordingly to make it to the harder rounds. In these later rounds the player is faced with greater energy costs for hitting a maze wall as well as greater costs for illuminating the level. The level time limit reduces and the movement speed increases. We realize this game is quite challenging and will likely intimidate at first as using visual memory, keyboard agility, and resource management together may prove to be a new experience for many players.

I worked on Blinkout with my good friend and fellow game designer Jeremy P. Bushnell. It marks my first collaboration and the experience was quite enjoyable. Jeremy took lead on the art direction and level design for the game while I took lead on the programming side of things. We worked equally on the game design and iterations of all the facets through kicking ideas and changes back and forth.  We were also very happy to get the game sponsored by King.com and they have been great to work with.

We hope you enjoy the game!

Spent the past three days cooking up this fun little robot-themed chain reaction game.  I’ve wanted to do a chain reaction game for quite some time and I really wanted to do a side perspective version that explored some fun and quick game play mechanics.  I spent a week or two mulling ideas over in my head before beginning development.  I’m rather happy how this turned out all things considered.

Play it here.