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.

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!

I’ve been cranking along on one of my biggest games and I recently finished a complete graphics overhaul!  The game had lasted a long time in the prototype art stage and it is really fun to have it finally in a highly polished state.

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!

I wanted to pass along some information about a multiplayer Flash game contest in the works that could even be of interest to Flash game developers with finished games.

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.