Create spells! Attack! Defend! Dodge!

Tactical spellcasting meets fast reflexes in this
duel game for two wizards and a Kinect v1.

Download for Windows

Credits:

• Tobias Wehrum: Programming, Game Design
• Jana Leinweber: Game Design

With assets by:

• Countdown Voice by Iwan “qubodup” Gabovitch
• Sound Effects from Universal Sound FX
• Video Music by Steven O’Brien
• Particles by Unluck Software
• Icons from Game-icons.net
• “Granstander Clean” font by Tyler Finck

Thanks to Tobias Müller for recording the video with me!

Here is a quick summary of the spells:

Apart from striving to make the game fitting for the unique capabilities of the Kinect, we also tried to adhere closely to the principle of counter-play: Every action should be interesting for the attacker and for the victim.

A few examples of counter-play in our spells:

• Projectiles are interesting to target/throw and it is also fun to evade them.
• If the enemy hoards spell containers, you can use an Energy Storm. This sucks for the enemy, but he can still quickly react and choose which spells to use.
• Air Blast can be used against a projectile-heavy enemy, reflecting those projectiles – but they still have to be targeted well.
• Heal helps the player, but while he heals he is busy and defenseless.
• If the enemy has an Air Blast or a Slowing Bubble, that might be the perfect time to hoard new spells – or to use a Poison Bubble.
• The enemy has a Shield? Use a Stone Strike – if the enemy blocks it, the Shield breaks on which was only 1/3 of the damage.

Starship Command Center Pro

Deep in space, nobody hears you scream
when the trial version of your OS runs out.

Not that screaming would do much.
Instead, you and your two friends now need to
figure out what the randomized buttons of the
free version of your system do.

Together, operate thrusters, cannons,
shields and a mining magnet, collect
gold and buy a proper license!

A cooperative and confusing space adventure
for three players with gamepads.

Download for Windows
GGJ page

Credits:

• Brian Davis: Idea, Game Design, Music and Sound Design
• Mikko Lepistö: Art
• Tobias Müller: Programming
• Tobias Wehrum: Lead Programming

With sounds assets by Ricky Situ, CST 201 KaWilson and Jim Rogers.

The theme is used twice in our game – once in the game mechanic with players having to talk to each other what do to next because they need to work together, and secondly in the story: The trial version of our control system has ended and the result is a chaotic and unknown button layout, what do we do now?

We even satisfied a diversifier (sort of an achievements for the developers) this time: Noise Generator, “The mechanic of the game is based on players having to stay in constant communication with each other.”

Fun fact: Originally we wanted to do the controls Spaceteam-like with custom controls on multiple smartphones – buttons, sliders, rotatable knobs. It took us over a day to get it to connect and run smoothly between Android and PC, only to find out that using controls on a touch screen while looking at another monitor felt awful and (apart from buttons) was nearly unusable. So after that day of work, around 5 in the morning, I spent 30 minutes to program replacement gamepad controls. It worked perfectly and felt good.

Find a fairy. Follow the music. Save your friends. Escape safely.

And above all: Don’t touch the darkness.

Play for free in your browser on GameJolt!

A game made by Tobias Wehrum.

With assets by:

• Font “A song for Jennifer” by Brittney Murphy
• Fonts “Mara’s Eye” and “Mage Script” by Neale Davidson
• Atmospheric sounds by Kevin MacLeod

Snake meets platformer physics!

A short puzzle game combining two
well-known concepts to form a unique hybrid.

Play right here in your browser!
(And maybe rate it! Or share it with friends who might like it.)

Download for Windows, OS/X or Linux!

“But,” you might say, “only 9 levels?” Yeah, for now. I think it’s enough to demonstrate the concept well and especially the later levels might take some time to solve. I’m pondering releasing it on Android soon, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll search for a level designer and get more levels made. If you like it and want more of it, please leave a comment!

Credits:

• Idea and Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Fonts by Manuel Viergutz and Roland Huse
• Music generated with Abundant Music

Screenshots:

    

    

You are flame bearers, braving the darkness,
carrying letters and escorting travellers
through the eternal darkness between
the mountains to the south and
the sea kingdom to the north.

Overcome obstacles. Carry the torch on. Work together.

Go north. Ignore sounds in the dark.

And most importantly: Don’t let the flame die.

Send the link to a friend, and play it in your browser with the Unity plugin!

Download it for Windows, Linux or Mac!

Here is a video with clips of lots of people playing it on dvcolgan’s stream:

Used Assets:

• Fonts: Candela Bold by La Tipomatika, You Murderer BB by Nate Piekos
• Sound effects taken from Universal Sound FX
• Music made with Abundant Music, atmospheric sounds by Kevin MacLeod

Screamy Bird

Yell to make the bird fly up,
be silent to make it fly down.

Fun for the whole family AND the neighbors,
even if they aren’t in the same room!

Play in your browser!

Download for Windows!

I don’t know where people could possibly play this game without bothering anybody, but it was a big success fun-wise and was well received in the presentations. My favourite part is that it’s easily playable with crowds!

(And it would probably be perfect on smartphones, haha.)

Credits:

• Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Font: GemFonts

Thanks to:

• The stars of the video! If you want to be named and/or want to have a link here, please tell me!
• Huel Fuchsberger for helping me with the video editing!

Apologies to:

• Anybody who was sharing a room with me while I was developing this. I’m so very, very sorry.

And now, because social media websites love pictures when linking, here’s a picture. You’re welcome, social media websites.

Shoot all monsters of your color. Don’t let them touch you.
Your friend does the same.

Easy enough so far? Good.
Because you’ll also wear glasses in your color,
which means you can’t see your enemies at all!

A cooperative game about focus, teamwork, communication and fast reflexes –
for two players with red/red and cyan/cyan glasses and XBox360 controllers.

Play in your browser with the Unity Webplayer!
Download it for Windows!

Also, have some videos about how it works:

So – how does it work?

…surprisingly well! No really. But if you really don’t want to watch the first video, here’s how:

The yellow player fights the yellow monsters – he can’t interact with blue at all.

He wears red/red glasses though, and can’t see yellow at all…

…but if the blue player points his beam at one of the yellow monsters, the beam is BEHIND the monster, so it looks like this:

And now the yellow players knows where the monster is and can shoot it! All that remains now is good communication between the players and fast reflexes.

If you want to see it in action, you can watch this video.

The red/red and cyan/cyan glasses worked surprisingly well in extinguishing every single trace of yellow and cyan respectively, even in a projected image! (And in case you’re wondering, red images didn’t work, there were still faint ghost images.)

I really like how the game plays out. It’s interesting to see how people grow increasingly accustomed to playing it. Most start not talking at all and die a lot. Others focus solely on identifying the monsters for their partner and then die because they didn’t shoot their own enemies. Then, slowly, they start talking to each other: “There’s a monster here!”, “One there.”, “Move left! Left! Okay, you got it.” And later on some well-rehearsed teams start playing silently again for the most part, quickly finding the enemies their partner is pointing at.

I might visit the colored glasses mechanics again at a later jam.

Credits

• Idea and Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Art: Michael Kessler
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• Sounds: Robinhood76, Vegemyte, Marcus Lee
• Fonts: GemFont98, Nate Piekos

• The Player holds a tablet with a soundboard, showing buttons like “Left”, “Right” or “Grab”.
• The Robot is blindfolded and has a smartphone with headphones – and when the player presses a button, the robot hears what he pressed.

It’s still no game, but a VERY fun toy! I recorded three videos to show what the current prototype can do:

For those interested, here is the complete soundboard:

And here are the voice samples for you to listen to! I love the last one.

Inspiration

While I like to think that I came up with the idea myself, I obviously had inspirations. Here are those I can remember:

• Signal Delay by ChrisGaudino: A Ludum Dare prototype about remotely controlling a mars rover.
• Octodad by Young Horses, Inc: Octodad – Loving Father. Caring Husband. Secret Octopus. A game where you pretend to be a human by doing mundane tasks, but being an octopus with an incredible awkward control scheme makes this quite hard and incredibly funny.

Credits

• Programming: Tobias Wehrum
• Sounds: Iwan Gabovitch
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• Font: Hafizul Wananda Putra

Thanks a lot to our artist and the robots in the videos! Our sandwich-making robot is Adam “PunyOne” Streck. If he isn’t making sandwiches, he’s making games – you can find some of them at http://justaconcept.org!

Zombie Planet

Use your fingers to strike the zombies
with lightning and throw asteroids at them!

Defend your world against the invading
undead and save your people!

Download for Windows

Screenshots

Credits

• Developers: Tobias Wehrum, Martin Stark, Robert Meyer, Samuel Stein
• Sound Design: Iwan ‘qubodup’ Gabovitch
• With sound samples from (click here for full overview): Iwan ‘qubodup’ Gabovitch, Independent.nu, jessepash, Alvinwhatup2, scarbelly25, carbilicon, esperar
• Music: Kevin MacLeod
• 3D Art: p0ss, Moser Juan José
• Font: Nate Piekos
• Planet Texture: Second Mouse Studios
• Particles & Effects: Unity Technologies

Made with Unity 3D.

Blood Trial (Alpha Release)

You are participating in an
ancient ritual to appease the blood god.

Rip out other warriors hearts and sacrifice them
at the top of the temple while they’re still beating!

Keep the favor of the thirsty god and he’ll reward you generously!

Super Smash Bros. meets Mortal Kombat in
this fighting game for up to 4 players.

Download the current version for Windows

Global Game Jam entry

I’ll make a proper post about the jam and the game later (with video and all that), but I thought that it couldn’t hurt to have a link on my blog in the meantime.

Credits

Programming:

• Tobias Wehrum
• Benjamin Schug
• Dario Seyb

Art:

• Michael Kessler
• Tobias Breitenbach
• Kirill Krysov

Game Design, Producing and being all around awesome:

• Norbert Haacks