Aura

So I made this really short game a few weekends ago. I’ve been going back and fourth about posting it because it isn’t very long or particularly challenging, but I decided I should since I did spend a couple of days making it, and even if it didn’t turn out exactly how I had hoped I think it gets the idea across. And who knows, maybe I’ll return to it one day.

One of the goals I like to aim for when I make a game is take a personal experience and make it a shared one. For this game I wanted to convey the feeling of having an aura migraine, which is a condition I’ve suffered from my entire life. To do this I took a simple platformer and introduced artistic representations of some of the symptoms to debilitate the player. 

Aura migraines cause spots, dizziness, sensitivity to light, temporary blindness, numbing/tingling of the limbs, inability to talk/type correctly, fatigue, memory lapses, hallucinations, ringing in the ears, and of course, terrible headache pain. 

Sounds fun right?

So if you’d like to check it out, it only takes about 3 minutes to play. It’s best with sound.

After seeing some responses to the game I’m going to add a note here: If you start playing and you feel like you’re getting a headache please stop. It wasn’t my intention to inflict pain. I really appreciate your feedback!

Play it here               or Here

A Playlist for Johnny

I'm working on a personal game project right now to sort of explore the 2d side of things and learn some basic programming. I also really wanted to create something that was mine and in which I could really express my creativity. 

The working title  is “A Playlist for Johnny.” It will be a short narrative experience based on true events and created in memory of an old friend of mine. I've been posting updates on my tumblr, but it didn't want to upload my gifs or video so I decided to put them on here so I could link from this blog. I like making gifs lately...I blame tumblr. 

Anyway, what's happening in these gifs is some stand in animation and a few mechanics I have worked out for the first level. The main mechanic here is phasing through people. In the last gif the character she phases through is actually the title character Johnny who is standing in for student sprites I haven't made yet. The students will spawn and be walking in the opposite direction of the player character pushing her back and she will have to phase through them to get to the next room.

GDC Week 2013

Sorry I haven't posted on here for a while. Truth is I've been having a lot of fun with Tumblr. That site is addicting. So here is an update for my loyal blogger readers. This is still a wip but I added these images to my portfolio for GDC this year.

GDC was pretty good. It was nice to see everyone and I think I got a few good contacts.

This also happened:

Before the conference we did a little sight seeing. We went on a train tour of the beautiful redwoods and found a pretty cool arcade in Santa Cruz. The arcade had a lot of neat vintage games as well as a lot of newer ones. I had no idea they made arcade cabinets for iPhone games like Temple Run and Fruit Ninja until now.

Some new stuff

I'm still on the job hunt so with GDC not too far away I am trying to get some extra work done before then. I'm starting a new environment that I did some concept sketches for.

I've started modeling the high poly versions of the building pieces.

I also updated my portfolio website. My goal was to make it a bit simpler and more appealing. Landestroyer.com

I made a tumblr

http://landestroyer.tumblr.com/

Risky's Revenge

Risky Boots

Wayforward has been one of my favorite developers since I was 12 and a very nice man at EB Games suggested I buy Shantae for my Gameboy Color. Recently I have been reminded of just how awesome they are because of a bunch of new releases, two new Shantae games, the Mighty series, and Double Dragon Neon, to name a few. But all these weren't enough for me, so for nostalgia's sake I went to a new local Play N Trade the other day and traded in a bunch of the next gen titles that were collecting dust on my shelf for a few of their old GBC and GBA licensed titles. You can imagine the look I got for trading Fallout 3 for Barbie: the Princess and the Pauper.

You might understand better why I did this if you read this article:Might Switch Force: Inside Wayforward's under the radar Wii U launch game

Anyway I noticed they have a fan art section on their website so I decided to work on a little tribute to send their way.

The character is Risky Boots from Shantae. She's still a work in progress. I hope to be able to pose her once the initial sculpt is done. I'm still getting used to some of the new zbrush features and trying to understand the best way to use dynamesh.

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Decided to work on it a bit more today: