As the theme of this month’s EGP and the name suggest, you don’t do this my mashing franatically on your keyboard, but but by making sounds, recorded by your microphone. I hope you have one.

The dragon will either follow the PITCH of the sounds you make (which I prefer), be it by singing, whistling or by playing an instrument, or the VOLUME (which is fun too, though the game should then rather be called Screaming At Dragons).

I’m ambivalent how this one came out. Gameplay-wise it is not top-notch, and the pitch is often off (especially when not using an instrument), on the other side I think that it shows the key-concept rather well.

I guess I’m (heavily) over 7 days, I didn’t always work day-to-day and didn’t count the time – but since the topic “pitch recognition” wasn’t too easy and required some fiddling with calibration and configuration, not to speak about the keyless interface, the overtime is understandable I guess.

The pitch recognition itself is working fairly well – good enough for a prototype, though I would’ve hoped that it worked better with humming. Oh, well.

For this game I used C++ with my beloved SFML and FMOD as sound framework.

For those interested, here is the source code in form of an Eclipse CDT Project: Source Code

Click the image or here to start it.

The fishies follow the cursor when they are very young (and/)or want to make a baby. If they just made one, they will evade the cursor.

It’s more a failure than a prototype (much less a game), but it was worth a try

Somehow it also qualifies for the current EGP (“Zero Buttons”), but since it isn’t any good I won’t sent it in.

Trivia: The fishies like to stick together and make babies, it seems. Click here for an image of some fishcest…

And here we go for another (last minute) entry for the Experimental Gameplay Project! This month: Rejection.

Well, it is more a prototype than a game, but I will call it “game” anyway, simply because it sounds better this way.

Anyway, in the game you will be tested if you are good enough for The Job. To say anything more would be a spoiler, only so much: Yes, this game has an end.

Fun facts about the game:

• Due to time constraints, I changed the concept at least 3 times. (Which might be the reason why it’s hard to solve.)
• Since this is my first plattformer, I learnt much stuff about how they are developed. Or rather, how they aren’t. And when I think about it, it doesn’t really have any platforms, although the engine would allow it. Hu.
• None of my recruted-in-a-hurry beta testers could beat the game without help.
• It is based on a true story*

Oh, and some useful facts:

• This time my engine of choice was the Simple and Fast Multimedia Library – great thing!
• Developing editors is hard. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I hadn’t found this great tutorial on gametuto.com

Here’s a screenshot:

Download: The Job v1.0 (Windows)

You might need the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Oh, and like every time, I would love to read a comment about how you liked (or didn’t like) the game! Especially if you beat it. The Comment Section is just below.

*) Okay, you got me, it isn’t

The Game

Our final game is about obtaining as many bubbles as you can! You can do this by just peacefully collecting them, as there are many, but soon there won’t be – and then you have to dash at other players and hit them so they drop their bubbles and you (and everyone else, hurry!) can collect them. An interesting (and decepting) mechanic is that you can go off screen so that you don’t show, and while hidden, wander, so you deceive players about your real position – and suddenly jump out and get them! Furthermore, you can teleport a few times to the other part of the screen, and doing this while being hidden outside of the screen is a good method to sneak up on the others! (If you have read the post before: There are no alliances anymore, and there is only one kind of ball to collect.)

So without further ado, here is it: http://www.globalgamejam.org/2010/zinozini

I suggest you download the version in the “Installation Notes” below, because there are a few bugs fixed – but well, we won’t take down our 48h-state, it is also highly playable.

Your graphics card needs to support Shader 3.0 to play this game, and it is optimized to be played with Xbox 360 controllers. If you don’t have them, download it anyway, it even makes fun without them!

The game is written in C#, with XNA as framework.

Oh, and by the way, here is a Zino Zini wallpaper:

The Team

And here’s our team again, for those of you who skipped the other way-too-lengthy post:

Lars Kokemohr – Programming
Me, Tobias Wehrum – Programming
Daniel Bock – Game Design and Music/Sound
Norbert Haacks – Game Design
Additionally featuring: Phillip Gronek – Q&A Tester, Fun, Red Bull

What will be added soon

• A score screen!
• A test for Shader 2.0 (yes, 2.0. We want to make it run on 2.0, so stay tuned if you don’t support 3.0!)

Actually, we wanted to add a bunch of other stuff, for example but not limited to: A Splash Start Screen showing our splendid logo (om.nomnom games), a start menu, a credits page, preferences (sound/music on/off), a different mode without time limit, and and and… but time ran out, and since it is playable in the current state, we will only add the things named above for sure.

PS: If you ask where there key, the monkey or the donkey is, well… that is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, and therefore hard to find. (There is none. It got lost somewhere along the way of the development process, and afterwards we felt the game is too much fun to try to press a constraint in there. Before the balls collecting the bubbles should’ve become monkeys, but that wouldn’t go with the fine abstract look it has now.)