GGJ13 - The Seer and the Worm

I participated in the Global Game Jam 201 with Les Collégiennes (Fract's Henk Boom, Fez's Renaud Bédard, and the superstar that is Aliceffekt) - the resulting game is The Seer and the Worm (not sure about the title yet!), a weird psychedelic game inspired by Afterburner. The player switches between controlling the flying dog in a vision and grabbing captive monks during real-time. It's a little weird and crazy!

The game is not complete yet - one of the game's features was not totally working after the jam, so we will finish up... someday! Meanwhile, here's a bunch of strange screenshots!

Without Question - Card Art Preview

Here's a little preview of a card game I'm making with game designer extraordinaire Damian Sommer!

Alphanauts - A 48h Game Jam game!

This week-end, I spent the week-end working on a double game jam game with my Neverpants buddies Technobeanie and Ian Girard, for both the Indie Speed Run and the Ludum Dare 25. The result is a little survival game called Alphanauts!

Alphanauts are trying to survive an onslaught of strange black holes long enough to scan weird, dangerous rooms. 
You control all of them - up to 26 characters! Simply press and hold a letter key, then use the arrow keys to move the Alphanaut marked with that letter. You can control multiple little guys at once too! 
The situation can go to hell pretty quickly - dying alphanauts form black holes too, and death will affect all the other characters on screen. Calling upon a dead character by mistake will cause painful memories to his grieving friends, plus his skeleton will rise from the darkness to attack his old teammates!  
Survive as long as you can, as the black holes spread faster and more and more Alphanauts join the fray! 

Controls 
Letter keys (press and hold) - Control 1 or more characters 
Arrow keys - Move selected character(s) 
Enter - Start game 
Esc - Quit to menu, Quit Game

Play now!
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We made this game in 48 hours, participating in the Ludum Dare 25, with the theme "You are the Villain", and in the Indie Speed Run, with the theme "Loss" and the element "Skeleton". We mixed those themes, brainstormed for a couple hours on how to make "Loss" a part of gameplay and make the player create the villain himself. We wanted to make death of characters a rough and painful thing, to represent grief - so made it so that a dying character creates a permanent obstacle, and if you use that character's letter again, you cause grief and sadness to all the other Alphanauts, slowing down your progress.

We're pretty happy with the control mechanic (press and hold a letter key then use arrow keys to move the character marked with that letter) we developed for Alphanauts. Being able to move more than one character at the same time, and making "typos" part of the game mechanic ended up working pretty well.

Some issues pop up on some keyboards - sometimes some random letters don't work well with others. For example, on my keyboard, The letters BNGH can't be mixed with others. It's weird. Anyway! 

As a post-mortem kind of analysis, here's a list of features we wanted to have in the game but didn't have time, and some new thoughts that appeared on the day after uploading the game.

• Starting with 1 character and adding 2 more every level works well to introduce players to the game, but I think we could have ramped up the number of Alphanauts faster. The middle levels are a little boring and don't show off the grief mechanics fast enough, since typing mistakes are pretty rare with a low number of Alphanauts. We could have had a number that goes up like this: 1,2,4,8,16,26 so we reach the real fun faster, then raise difficulty with the other variables slowly.  Or maybe the number of dudes could vary from a level to the other, say one level with 20 with a lot of space, then a level with 12 but with many more obstacles, then a level with 26 characters all bunched up in a group, 
• Level variety would have helped a whole lot - Adding obstacles like blocks, walls, holes in levels would have given the game a lot more variety and would have helped add some flavor to the game - we would have themed the obstacles around the weird, alien, ancient tower that we had in mind, thus creating a better setting for the Alphascan.
• Having different Triangle sizes would have added more variety.
• The Alphascan process is not clear enough. Having the Alphanauts scan with some sort of device would help understand what's going on and how grief interrupts scanning. The maths behind the Alphascan make the game kind of unbalanced too, maybe there's a way to change the scanning to something a little simpler...
• Alphanauts should have more animation - walking, scanning, etc.
• Alphanaut variety would have been fun, different heads, different headcuts.
• An intro scene or text would have helped set the tone and tell a story.
• Balancing is far from perfect at the moment - wish we'd had more time to fix it!
  
• Sounds are good, but they could be better - we didn't take the time to fit sounds to animations and all that.
• Music track could be a little longer so we don't feel the loop after 10-15 levels.
• Failure and success screens are stiff - having them animated would be pretty good!
• Add a metagame. Having some sort of economic system would have given the game a stronger drive, made its goal clearer. Let's say a successful Alphascan gives you money, dispatching Alphanauts to new sectors costs money, replacing dead Alphanauts costs money, treating grieving Alphanauts could cost money too. The goal of the game could be to manage a research team with a clear goal of identifying an ancient alien race - every Alphascan would raise your Research meter or something like that. It would also add some rewards through a level - the Alphascan could show results as you're scanning a room,  discovering symbols, relics, DNA samples... Each of those would give you money or progress in your research. It'd make a better gameplay loop.

We hope you enjoy playing Alphanauts - it was definitely a fun challenge to design, code, illustrate, compose and balance, but it was worth it! 

You can help us get some visibility by playing and rating the game on the Ludum Dare website, right here! While you're there, give a look to the hundreds of awesome jam games too!

16 Games and counting!

Here are icons from all the games I've worked on at Nom so far!

Dom2D's 2012 in Games

2012 is without a doubt my favorite year in gaming so far, mostly thanks to some of the biggest indie game releases ever - Fez, Journey, Spelunky, Walking Dead, Proteus... I've also been surprised by the quality and fun mechanics of some big AAA titles I never thought I would be hooked on, like XCOM and Dragon's Dogma! Then there's a bunch of iPhone titles that I brought with me everywhere - I know Kingdom Rush and 10000000, among others, kept me up late and had me arrive late to work this year!

I probably forgot a few, and clearly I haven't played everything - my backlog is getting out of control - but I feel the list shown here is mind-blowing. I needed to set this in stone, and that's why I did this quick little mosaic!

10000000 - papo & yo - half-minute hero - puzzle craft - dishonored - sound shapes - out there somewhere - xcom enemy unknown - triple town - la mulana - botanicula - diablo IiI - retrocity rampage - journey - spelunky hd - plague inc.- dustforce - fez - tobe & friends hookshot escape - borderlands 2 - spell sword - proteus - mini mix mayhem - rhythm heaven fever - puzzlejuice - quantum conundrum - tiny&big - sniper elite v2 - walking dead - the unfinished swan - dragon’s dogma - you have to win the game - kingdom rush

Prince of Arcade - Tonight!

If you're in Montreal tonight, you gotta show up at the Prince of Arcade, where tons of games will be playable on giant screens! Come play BaraBariBall, Samurai Gunn, Panoramical and more, and get a chance to try out Greedy Piggy Chase in the Arcade Royale! 

For more information check out the Mount Royal Game Society blog and the facebook event!

Slimeful: Greedy Piggy Chase!

And we're 100% done! Woop woop! Thanks to the intense efforts of our team, the game's ready to be put in the Arcade Royale here in Montreal! I'll take this moment to say thank you to Pierre-Luc and Ian and say that everyone should check out their websites and twitter accounts!

SeventySevian / Ian Girard - Tumblr - Twitter

Technobeanie / Pierre-Luc Poirier - Site - Twitter

And also check out FX Dupas music stuff! Thanks FX!

FX Dupas - Twitter - Site

Next step: a video! I hope to have some time to do a video capture as soon as possible!

Then we're off to the Prince of Arcade on the 13th to have a blast playing BaraBariBall, Rain World, Samurai Gunn and many other games! If you pass by, please try our game in the Arcade Royale cabinet! Woop woop!

TIGSource Devlog Magazine #6

A new game making competition has begun on the TIGSource forums and the theme is SPORTS! Don't expect the usual football and hockey games from indie developers though! A month from now, we will be playing a crazy series of sports games, from the hyperviolent (Dodgefist, By the Law of Blades) to the hilarious (Limbolympic).

21 Games: 2001: A Chess Odyssey, All my balls, Avalanche Week-End, By the law of blades, Dodgefist, Dungeon Dashers, The Few, Flug GB, Gladiator School, Greedy Piggy Chase, Gunbox, Jet Lance Polo, Limbolympic, New World Songbirds, Project Netsuke, Screaming Snakeball, Sneeze Kendo, Something About Knives, The Threat, Tiny Football Manager, X-Pong Armageddon Tournament Edition

As always, click the picture to see the interactive version on Venus Patrol!

Slimeful: Greedy Piggy Chase! Devlog #4

We're almost there! We'll be presenting the game at the Mount Royal Game Society on Wednesday, then we'll take our time to polish the game for a while! 

Took quite a long time for me to produce the background art for the game - I really wanted it to be detailed and colorful - but it was worth it. I'll probably tweak it and add some details in the coming weeks, when I have a bit more time.

I took some time to do some animation too - slimes exploding! It's sort of a placeholder, since I don't have time to do proper animation... But it's still kinda funny!

We tested the game a bit, but only amongst our team (and with my girlfriend!), so I'm expecting some issues will pop up when fellow devs test the game out on Wednesday. We'll do a round of tweaks and patching up in the next couple weeks, then we'll be ready to show it again at some other event!

TIGSource Devlog Magazine #5

In this issue, there's a new simulation RPG called Avant-Garde about life as a painter in Paris. Yes, you read that right! Speaking of art, we get concept illustrations for Soulstrand and Burden, plus a nice fan art for The Walled Garden, and other artists showing off their shiny new art in Alienoid Core, Ritus and Aeon.

19 games!
Aeon, Alienoid Core, Antharion, Avant-Garde, Burden, Eris, Hostile Takeover, Lemma, Metal Mage, Meteor Storm Escape, Ritus, Son of Nor, Soulstrand, Swamp Fever, The Walled Garden, TD Game, Under the Ocean, Unlamentia, Welcome to Bunny Land

Click on the picture to visit the article on Venus Patrol - once there you'll be able to click on the map and visit a game's thread! Woohoo!