Got a new game launching today! This one is called Bomb Diver and it’s a fun little NES-inspired retro game that combines aspects of Missile Command with the avoider, collector, and chain reaction genres.

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.

Here is the collection of daily drawings I did this past week. As I mentioned in the previous post my goal this week was to try out a creativity exercise I had read about that sounded like an interesting challenge. The basic idea was to draw five random starting lines and then see how many original drawings I could create each day given those same lines. It ended up being a lot of fun for me. I’m always amazed how wrapping something inside constraints can provide a unique direction or focus. I found I was really looking forward to each day’s drawing and seeing what I’d come up with. By the end of the week I was quite familiar with the lines. I think my favorite from the series is “Hold On Tight”.

I also created an animation of the five drawings called “Five From Five” as an interesting way to present how all the drawings relate to each other:

You can click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

Here are the starting lines	“Yellow Dog” – Oct 10th, 2011
“Southwest” – Oct 11th, 2011	“Horncordion” – Oct 12th, 2011
“Hold On Tight” – Oct 13th, 2011	“Just Keep Swimming” – Oct 14th, 2011
“Fall” – Oct 15th, 2011	“Eggplant” – Oct 16th, 2011

For Saturday and Sunday I decided that five days of using the same lines was enough and just drew whatever I wanted. I’m trying to experiment a bit more with light and color as demonstrated in “Eggplant” above and I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I’ve spent so many years mainly drawing in black and white pen or pencil that I’m really excited to finally be pushing my color skills and learning.

Not sure what this week holds for the daily drawings. It was really nice to have some constraints or guidelines so I may have to think of something to provide a bit of structure. We’ll see!

This past week I spent about an hour each morning doing a different drawing. I had read a tutorial by Marcus Hadlock that provided some good tips on how to draw in Flash and was further inspired by encountering his Daily Doodle project where he made a different drawing each day for a year. I thought this sounded like an interesting idea and while I may not do it every single day I do want to try it for a while and see how it goes.

Now I do use a Wacom tablet and I normally do all of my drawing in Photoshop because for whatever reason I’ve never really enjoyed drawing in Flash. I felt I spent most of my time fighting with it in fact. Well it turns out a lot of the problem was just some basic misunderstandings of the brush tool along with also learning some nice simple coloring, shading, and highlighting tricks using a few basic layers.

I corresponded a bit with Marcus over G+ to ask him some further questions about things I saw in his tutorials but then it was time to put my learning into action!

Below are the results of my first week. Six drawings in total since I started on Tuesday. I figure I’ll post the montage once a week on Sunday with the week’s drawings. I do post the daily drawings over on Twitter and G+ though.

You can click on the thumbnails to enlarge them.

“Banjo Farmer” – Oct 4th, 2011	“Loquacious Mime” – Oct 5th, 2011
“Focused Frog” – Oct 6th, 2011	“Red Robot” – Oct 7th, 2011
“The Loneliest Puppeteer” – Oct 8th, 2011	“Tree Beast” – Oct 9th, 2011

Some of these drawings just came from my subconscious when I sat down with my coffee in the morning and tried to imagine something to draw. A few of them though came from friends when I asked on Facebook for some random character prompts to do some improv. My friends suggested both “Loquacious Mime” and “The Loneliest Puppeteer” and I’m pretty happy with how they came out.  The other interesting fact is that “Banjo Farmer” came from a creativity exercise that Marcus posted about where you draw a random squiggly line and attempt to build a face out of it.

There was another creativity exercise Marcus posted a few days ago where you draw five squiggly lines and attempt to build an entire composition using them. I think as a challenge this week I will be using the same squiggly lines all week long but drawing a different drawing from the same lines each day. I’m excited about this challenge and we’ll see how it turns out!

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!