Here’s a thing that I did at my last Mini Jam. I originally had this idea for the last Ludum Dare (theme: Entire Game on One Screen) and since I dropped out of that, I did it now.
Rotate the center and the bubbles coming in to connect same-colored bubbles.
Survive with as many points as possible!
Play in the Webplayer or on Android.
Credits:
At the November Mini Game Jam (for which we had over 100 participants, wow!) I made my first experiments ever with the MaKey MaKey, an Arduino-based kit that measures when a circuit is closed – even through very high resistance like a chain of people holding hands. My game is less about hand-holding though, and more about poking your opponent’s hand with a pen-lance. Enter Electric Finger Jousting!
Take your pen-lance! Get ready, and… fight!
Poke the other player before they poke you!
But beware, don’t touch them before
you hear “fight”, or it’ll be a foul…
It’s not all fun and sunshine though: The game is a rather repetitive. I hoped to get a fencing kind of game, but it is really hard to balance the distance so it’s neither too easy to hit nor unreachable. Moving while touching the copper wire (which ensures that the right distance is being kept) isn’t easy, so you aren’t very flexible. That leads to very short distance jabs that are nearly impossible to react to and each round was pretty short. Despite that, fun was definitely had while developing and playtesting!
PS: When you do something like this, have water nearby to regularly dip everything into which will make circuit contact for a very short time. Water improves the conductivity so much.
Credits:
A few months ago, I made my first puzzle game ever for Ludum Dare 29. It was well received (#16 in Innovation!) and players called it “clever” and “challenging”, but the difficulty curve was too steep. Now, I finally found the time to make a post-compo edition with more and easier tutorial levels to ease the beginning and a really hard one where you can test your mettle! I humbly present:
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:
Screenshots:
A month ago at the last Berlin Mini Game Jam, I set out to experiment and get acquainted with the Tobii EyeX which can track where your eyes are – and more importantly, where exactly you look on the screen. The obvious thing would be to use that gaze tracking, but out of ideas and inspired by Amazon Fire Dynamic Perspective, I tried to use the actual eye tracking to make the monitor behave like a window into a real-life scene.
My goal was to create the illusion of actual 3D, but maybe due to my scene not being very exciting that turned out rather boring. It looked a bit more interesting once I dropped the “real-life window” idea and made it more a “choose your perspective with head movement” control by exaggerating the movement. By then, I had only half an hour left and no gameplay, so I did the obvious: I added polka and bouncing balls that shoot where you look! Maybe it could have been an interesting horror game with good assets and actual gameplay – although for an immersive perspective horror game, I would probably rather use an Oculus Rift.
And man, it’s hard to come up with good ideas for this device. While eye tracking is widely established for user testing, it’s rather new when it comes to being used in games themselves. I certainly don’t make it easier for myself with my rules for experiments with new technology:
Eye trackers seems to be more suited for passive or highly situative supporting roles – targeting, for example, seems to be easier and more precisely done with a joystick or a mouse for most purposes. But by now, I have a really cool idea that I want to experiment with next time. Can’t wait until I get a new laptop with USB3 so I can try my hand at eye tracking again!
Credits:
A few weeks ago, I participated in the Ludum Dare 30. The theme was “Connected Worlds”, and I thought “Hey, nevermind that I never made an online multiplayer game before, I should totally try to make one in 48 hours!” Unexpectedly, it actually turned out pretty great – you can read more about that in my postmortem if you’d like to. And below you can find the ~52 hour post-compo version with a few bugfixes and sound effects!
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:
The rating period is slowly but surely nearing its end, and I thought it cannot hurt to write a postmortem for the game I made three weeks ago. I wish I would’ve promoted the game more (it’s my first online multiplayer game after all!) and I wish I could’ve played more games, but my master’s thesis was jealous and demanded I spent more time with it. That being said, I have a free minute now, so here goes nothing!
For the July Berlin Mini Jam, I experimented with the input interface. Turns out a cardboard contraption with fiducial markers and Unity3D + NyARToolkit on the software side makes for a fun crocodile maw control system! I didn’t finish the game (you can’t win or lose, you can’t even score), so I declared it a story-focused artgame. That’s how it works, right?
The crocodile is hungry and wants to eat,
but despite all the food, it can’t!
Because of explosions.
Moral of the story:
Explosions make everything better.
You’ll need these two markers: Hiro and WD (taken from here).
You’ll also need cardboard to build the maw.
(If you’re wondering why I didn’t use the standard Hiro & Kanji markers –
I just took what was lying around from earlier experiments.)
Despite being unfinished, it was a lot of fun to present:
Here’s a more detailed look at the cardboard maw:
Credits:
It seems like everyone and their dog has made a Flappy Bird clone by now, but so far I just didn’t feel inspired. That changed at this Mini Game Jam: I wanted to make a game with audio control (which I had tried before) and needed simple gameplay for it – and then I realized that a scrolling avoider-type would fit perfectly. So without further ado, this is how Flappy Bird might have played like if it was made by the GNILLEY developer:
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!
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:
Thanks to:
Apologies to:
And now, because social media websites love pictures when linking, here’s a picture. You’re welcome, social media websites.
This jam, I didn’t even really want I’d participate and instead just sit around and talk to people, but two hours in I was like “Everyone around me is busy, so let’s make something too!”. I only had 6 hours left and no concept, but it’s not like that ever stopped me…
Bounce your ball back and forth!
Build walls at the right moment!
Claim the star once and for all!
(You’ll need two XBox 360 controllers.)
Controls:
Left/Right Stick: Play your diamonds.
Left or Right Back Button: Place a wall. (Has a cooldown.)
Credits:
A few weeks ago I visited the A MAZE./Berlin Festival. Apart from showing Catcher and talking to lots of other indie devs, I also visited the #weirdkids workshop on digital improvisation and made a weird glitch art thing with the base projects they gave us. Proudly presenting:
press c to cat
press d to dance
press f to frenzy!
(If you have epilepsy, don’t click on the following links!)
Start it right in your browser!
Download for
Windows / Linux / OS/X
When Fernando and Christoffer told me to give them a build after the workshop, I thought it would be shown in a presentation for a few seconds. Instead, I later found out that it was shown in the cellar exhibition. So cool!
press c to cat wasn’t made for long exhibitions at all though – the cats spawned automatically, but never despawned! So soon, it looked like this, with no cats recognizable anymore, haha.
When I entered the exhibition space, there were lots of people sitting in a circle in front of the exhibits – and it turns out they all had wondered about this strange cat game that seemingly contained no cats, only glitchy geometry. I restarted it – and finally they saw the cat and went “Ooooh”, haha. It was awesome!
After the festival, I got some reviews on Twitter too:
Also, lying next to the monitor, I found the BEST THING EVER – a short fanfiction!
Responsible for this lovely work of poetry are Titouan Millet, Max Cahill and Michal Marcinkowski. The first piece of fanfiction I ever received! Thanks a lot, guys!