Year 2013 was me mainly about The Infected card game. A card game that I’ve been iterating for several years. I got a beta out (which is basically the feature-complete game, lacking better rulebook, better tutorials… and some card typo fixes) and aim to get the polished version out early this year (2014).
I must say that creating a simple, short-to-play, fun card game isn’t as easy as I anticipated. The time to ship physical products around the world takes time.
I got several playable prototypes out: Angry Troll Run (simple Android test), Thinglings (very simple card game, but actually pretty cool), Raftsmith (simple get out of the isle puzzle game).
Each of these prototypes had a different purpose: Angry Troll Run was about me seeing how difficult it is to develop for Android. Thinglings was “I want to make this really simple, really small card game on desktop” and for Raftsmith I wanted to see if I can draw fast & make a survival game. The game initially had much more plans… but at least I got the very, very, very compact & playable version out.
And yes, one game a month is cool. You too should join.
Some thing that got less attention was my 7 day FPS entry… which unfortunately I could not finish due problems with the FPS game creator. (yeh, I blame technology here, bear in mind that I wanted to spend days not weeks on these). I had a pretty cool story about a murder that happens in a hotel and that detective must figure out who did it… there was several characters and some “hey, why those planks on the roof look odd” type of figuring for the player. Too bad FPS creator simply could not meet all the tiny details I wanted. It was pretty cool thing to work on though.
I continued playing around with the detective ideas and drafted some plans for a a procedural detective/forensic game.
I thought about the gameplay but couldn’t get past “clue” type of hunting so eventually I thought this was too complex beast to tackle. I wish somebody goes and makes a complex, narrative procedural detective game one day, but all the plans I had are not technically so easy. Narrative AI must go some steps further.
I also dived into the Unity camp and made some technical demos for just myself. My first bit grim entry is called Rest In Pieces, and it’s actually pretty neat and there’s some ideas for developing it further… so I just share a picture. This might turn into something more at some point. We’ll see.
I also made a very crude mobile prototyping tool for myself (since I couldn’t bother taking dice and figures to xmas trip). This tool was helping in designing simple gameplay mechanisms (or theoretically even simple games).
Unity is simply a really cool thing and I’m totally sold for it.
I tweeted “Give a man a game engine and he delivers a game. Teach a man to make a game engine and he never delivers anything.” (which sort of sums up my own experiences and thoughts when we look at the industry today) and it got 1000+ retweets pretty fast.
(Please rate and comment here, thanks!)
And the year ended me participating in the Ludum Dare jam. In just 72 hours I created a pretty moody space game where player needs to answer some really serious questions. The game has many layers in which it tries to do and I’m actually very, very pleased how it turned out.
A short teaser is available on youtube:
The game web version can be played here: Selene (download links here)
I’ll write a more detailed “post mortem” and future plans regarding The Selene Project later.
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That’s pretty much my gaming year 2013 in pictures (with a some piecesof commenting too…)
Over and out.
To say thank you for a great year, we’re offering 15% OFF any boot camp, in-person course, or online course when you use code MBTHANKU. Choose from any of our exciting upcoming courses, from a copy editing class taught by the chief copy of Seventeen Magazine to an intro course for Excel. Hurry – offer expires 12/24! Browse our upcoming courses.
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