Wednesday, July 25, 2012

You Wake Up To Marmageddon!

Earlier in the year I had an idea to make a game that was a little like Scrabble, but with an entirely different theme. Through various avenues of thinking I ended up with quite a different game, although there were still tiles with various values on them.



I then presented this game to my good friend and artist Peter Freer, and after some play testing he suggested some very shrewd and significant changes. 

Not long after I was wrestling with problem with my Masters level students - how to teach them the value of making their games as fast as possible and then spending as much time as possible tuning them. 

Aha! I thought, the game with the tiles, I can use that, because it's finished.

Using the version I presented to Pete (not the modified version after play testing with him) I got my class playing and changing, letting them change one thing after each play.

The process got the point across and I think it's fair to say that we were all pleased with the results. 

The game had a dungeon theme, which was chosen originally simply because the fantasy setting lends itself well to pretty much any games you want to try.

But then it occurred to me I could re-theme it into a zombie game, to fit in with my "Bill Johnson - Zombie Issues Specialist" universe, which is set in New Zealand. Aaand I could also tie it in with the unusual Marmite famine which has beset this fair nation in the wake of the Christchurch quakes. 

So, if you want to print and play this board game, you can find it here.


Monday, June 25, 2012

Great Places for Game Backgrounds and Settings

In my collection of game design resources I have a list of amazing places around the world. Such lists are a useful shortcut in the game design process - travel, adventure and the exotic are all important parts of the visual side of game design.

The only problem with this list is the fact that it is but a list of words, and these places are all about how they look. I am now in the process of transferring this list to a Pinterest board - click on the image to see it...



Sunday, April 15, 2012

So Long Jack Tramiel

Somewhere in a loft, in the fair and mighty county of North Yorkshire, there rests my greatest teenage dream. In 1987 I turned 12 and, apart from being besotted with the female of the species, I had a craving for technology, any technology, and when the Atari ST came into my sights it was love at first sight. 

The following year I was extremely lucky and managed to snag myself a 520 Atari STFM – it had a built in disk drive (still the half meg version) and TV modulator! 

And how I loved it. 

Jack Tramiel - Apparently as hard headed as a business man could be...


I used that computer day and night – pixel art in Degas Elite, writing in First Word Plus, cranking out poems with some weird automated poetry writing software, failing to learn to program with STOS, even sound sampling – which really meant recording things then playing them backwards or at different pitches. And, of course, games, great great games, like Stunt Car Racer, Dungeon Master, Midwinter, Populous and the Secret of Monkey Island. Work (sort of) and play all in one perfect package. 

That ST got used so much that the left mouse button stopped working with any reliability within a year, so my dad swapped the wires around so the right mouse button got all the action. Soon I had to get a new mouse altogether, a Naksha mouse, still the best mouse I’ve ever owned. The power supply even flaked out after a few years of merciless heat and had to be replaced, which is still the pinnacle of my electronic engineering endeavours. 

The man that made this machine possible was Jack Tramiel, a survivor of Auschwitz and founder of Commodore. Under his reign Commodore made and sold a little computer called the Commodore 64, which is a blockbuster by anyone’s standards, bringing a proper computing into tens of millions of homes. 

Corporate wrangling left Jack on the wrong side of the Commodore board room door, so he set up a new company, acquired the computer half of Atari and drove too hard a bargain trying to purchase the Amiga, allowing Commodore to step in and make a sensible offer for the technology instead. Incapable of admitting defeat, Tramiel and Atari cobbled together the ST from off the shelf parts (not like any shelf I ever had) and made my decade. 

I’ve been working in video games development for nearly 17 years now, using skills I half learned with a clunky mouse and my first full keyboard. When people say “you know computers” to me, it’s Jack Tramiel and the Atari ST that deserve the credit. 

Thank you Jack, for making the machine that made me, I will forever be in your debt. 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Monster Flip!

Occasionally a game comes along which makes me think I WISH I’D THOUGHT OF THAT! Launching Pad Games, makers of Mighty Fin!, have created just such a game. 

It’s a match 3 game, so it has the same instant appeal of any match 3 game, that compulsion that lives in the lizard brain and dates back to the dawn of time when our ancient ancestors first lined things up in matching rows – I wish I knew what it means.

Click the image...

But this game isn’t like other match 3 games, it’s got something really special – instead of flipping just two things each time, you can flip whole rows (or columns) of things. In fact you can’t actually flip as few as just two things; you have to flip a minimum of three things. 

To do this, all you have to do is slap your finger down on the screen and drag it through a line of three or more things and then they flip over, switching order. That’s the bit that I wish was my idea, it’s such a great way of taking the match 3 concept and making the most of it with a touch interface – swapping two things, like normal match 3 games, is a mouse clicking and moving exercise, placing your finger on the screen and dragging a selection over several objects, that’s a touch interaction. 

Oh, and the things are monsters who want to escape earth, you can flip without having to make a match and angry monster must be sent home within a limited number of flips, otherwise it’s game over. 

Brilliant; get it now.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Ludography -->

Hey, look over there to the right, there's a page called Ludography where you can  read about some of the games I've made and my experiences making them.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Nike+ FuelBand

I spend a lot of time working on things which I really can’t talk about. However, it’s not unreasonable for me to say that I’ve been doing a lot of research around the fusion of exercise and gaming. One of the latest gizmos into the arena of effort tracking is the Nike+ FuelBand, which you wear on your wrist and measures pretty much all the movement you do. I want one and might just have to get one when it’s launched on the 22nd of this month. Click on the image to go to the official Nike site to learn more.

I am not the only person on the internet who's wondering if this thing tells the time...


Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Games To Play

When you've had your money's worth out of my Christmas Tripeaks game you might fancy playing a game with your family and friends, in the classic Christmas style. 

Over on my personal blog I implore you not to go for the usual Monopoly default and play something more interesting instead!