We The Giants (experimental gameplay)

We The Giants was another entry for the monthly experimental gameplay challenge and ended up being a runner up for Space Invaders Exhibition at the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology. This time the theme was "art games". The game was build around the idea of the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants".

It was very interesting to see how people responded to the concept and even more so, to see different patterns with different communities, ranging from genuine comments to hilarious meta games. Currently around 26000 people have left their "wisdom" in the game which you can find at twitter.com.

Over the course of a few months it gained some attention online,

indiegames.com
auntiepixelante.com
jayisgames.com
gamerswithjobs.com
oujevipo.over-blog.fr (french)
4playerpodcast.com


Play the game at wethegiants.thegiftedintrovert.com

Six And A Half (experimental gameplay)

Six and a half was my entry for the monthly experimental gameplay challenge over at experimentalgameplay.com. The theme of the challenge was "failure" and i wanted to recreate a sense of "parental failure" through the game in which you play as a young girl stuck between her parents, in the midst of a divorce, trying to make things better.

I wanted the player to experience this situation through the eyes of the six year old girl and therefore tried to express the message procedurally through the rules of the game, visually through the art and auritory through the sounds.

Procedurally, the game cannot be won but has two endings showing the position of the child. You cannot get out of your parents argument and it will inevitably affect you. Your actions are limited to two options (kiss, scream) showing the limited actions you have as a child. The words of the argument remain behind in your world showing the permanent effect of the situation.

Visually, the world becomes more grim and colorless as the parental argument gets worse showing what the change to the child world. The days go by mimicing the endlessness of the situation. The girl fades out when she is affected by the argument showing it consumes her.

Auditory, the scream sound is quite hard and unpleasant to hear indicating the how the child must feel. I also wanted to add an overall ambient sound of a couple verbally fighting all the time which would enhance as the argument gets worse and would come a sudden stop at the divorce, but i never managed to find a suitable sound for this.

Play the game at sixandahalf.thegiftedintrovert.com

Free Icecream

Free Icecream is a point 'n click adventure designed with a team of 5 students as part of a level design course. You play as a little girl trapped in a the cellar of a big house. Your mission: to escape alive.

I was responsible for the programming of the game and in part the game design.

Play the game at freeicecream.thegiftedintrovert.com or at newgrounds.com

Napi (mobile game)

Napi is a mobile game created over a period of two to three months in which you play as napi, a butterfly whoes goal it is to color a colourless world. The following is an excerpt from the help screen which gives a better understanding of the game.

"Napi the butterfly has been given the task to give color to the world. On her journey encounters empty shapes which she can color by hitting the corresponding key matching her own color. Shapes com in all sorts and can be recognized by their white outline.

But beware, some shapes are corrupted and will hurt Napi if you hit a key. Napi will show you when a shape is corrupted by showing spots on his wings. Napi also has an enemy being the wasp. The wasp can be beaten by matching the color the wasp takes on with the corresponding key.

- Good Luck"

The video shows gameplay footage taken from the first three levels as the game runs in an mobile phone emulator. The game was created in J2ME by me and a fellow student. Our tasks were equal throughout the realisation of the game being conceptualization, gamedesign, leveldesign, art and programming.

Space Station Attack (card game)

A tile-laying card game for 2 to 4 players that I created with a fellow student. Players have to destroy each others space station card by 4 attaching attack cards to it. Before players can do this they first have to use their attack cards to destroy the defensive cards around the space station. That way they can gain acces to the sides of their opponents' space station card. The game uses rock-paper-scissors mechanics to determine the outcome of attacks.

Free Truckers

Free Truckers is a game created with 3 fellow students over a period of 2 months. The goal was to create a game that is easy to pick up and should be fun for at least 3 minutes. My role in this was part programming (HUD) and part art (interfaces, HUD, car model). The video below shows the gameplay,

The Nodding Donkey

The Nodding Donkey is a game that was created in a collaboration between 5 students from the Utrecht School of Arts and 3 students of Delft University. It is a puzzle game in which you guide a team of moles, through a maze of tunnel networks and obstacles located on the sides of a big cubical of ground, in their quest for oil; the goal being, to connect the oil resource to the nodding donkey before time runs out. The video below was a rough indication meant to show core gameplay and overall experience of the game.

I was in charge of creating 3 of the 4 moles that you use in the game, the gameplay movies, and wrote the majority of the design document.