Video Game DesigN
Below is a collection of small games that I’ve made during game jams over the years with the help of a few programmers along the way.
Polygonal
Inspiration from constraints
The goal in designing Polygonal was to attempt to create a game from start to finish as quickly as possible in the Unity game engine. With significant help from friend and fellow game designer, Kyle Smith, we were able to have it finished and playable on a device in less than 10 hours of development. The idea was to keep the game as simple as possible, taking inspiration from Flappy Bird, we designed the gameplay around only having one player input. This constraint on player interaction naturally guided the game to having a “beat your high score” type of gameplay.
Simple But Addictive
The player controls a white circle as it bounces up and down to avoid other shapes flying in from the right, tapping the screen reverses the direction of the player ball. Gameplay starts with small shapes moving at a slow pace that quickly become much larger and faster, eventually capping out in size and speed. Getting the game to a playable state didn’t take much time, which allowed us to dedicated a few hours to play testing. In that time we fine tuned the speed and size of objects, both the enemy shapes and player sprite. We landed on a sweet spot where the player could rack up a considerable high score but it never felt easy to do, you had to work for it.
D6
Design From Skill Building
The idea for D6 started when two of my game design/programmer friends, Bradston Henry and Kyle Smith, wanted to learn how to set up a multiplayer network on IBM servers using the Unity game engine. Due to the limited time we had available, the visual aesthetic we chose was as minimalist as possible, using cubes to populate the level.
Engaging Multiplayer Gameplay
Our challenge with this game was to create engaging gameplay without many features or functions outside of basic single player controls. That inspired a core gameplay mechanic that awarded the player points for traversing the level. Each player or team is assigned a color and attempts to collide with as many cubes throughout the level as possible. We experimented in playtesting with making the point value of each cube based on its height within the level, which encouraged players to fight for control of high structures.
Happy Dinosaur Death Party
Game Design Workshop
This delightfully odd game was the product of a game design workshop that I hosted with the help of Bradston Henry and Kyle Smith. We held a 6 hour workshop where fellow IBMers could attend and learn some of the basics of the Unity game engine. Working with a group of skilled programmers who had never worked with a game engine was a fun challenge. Their inexperience ended up bringing a unique perspective to the process, “What if we…” was a common phrase throughout the day.
