The Draw (June 2015)

This was made as part of the month long International Love Ultimatum Game Jam, (or ILUJam for short.) The game is a visual novel about relationships and confidence. The story follows Eulia, a college freshman, who falls for a cute soccer player named Mel after she talks to them. Players are able to choose some of the things Eulia says, and these in turn effect her confidence as well as Mel's confidence. The story ends differently depending on how confident Eulia and Mel are in the possibility of them potentially having a relationship.

I did everything on the game except the character art, which was done by Jones Wiedle, and the music/sound effects which were found free online. During the development I also kept a dev blog discussing some of the aspects of the development. The most notable posts were:

• On the relationship/confidence system.
• On using Twine for writing/prototyping.
• On using visual novel engine/editor TyranoBuilder for the first time.
• The post-mortem on some things I would have liked to have done or done differently.

 

Play The Draw

You're at a ____ (April 2015)

This was a game I made during the two week long Twiny Jam, (the object was to make a Twine game with few then 300 words.) You're at a ____ was an attempt to make a minimalist text adventure game, (like a Zork,) where the game would end after 300 or more words appeared on screen over the course of play. So players would need to discover how to navigate to the ending before they ran out of words.

This is what the finished game looked like in the Twine editor:

Play You're at a ____.

Noire Time (Sept. 2012)

Noire Time is a point-and-click adventure style interactive narrative game that I made by myself during the 48 hour Adventure Time game jam. The game is based on the BMO Noire episode of Adventure Time, in which Finn & Jake's sentiant game console BMO fabricates a detective noire story around locating Finn's lost sock while Finn & Jake are out on an adventure. 

After the game jam, Noire Time was featured on Wired.com, Destructoid.com and on Kill Screen's website.

"...features wonderful 2-D art and a fun -- if small -- set of puzzles." - Ryan Rigney, Wired.com

"It is cute and great." - Jonathan Holmes, Desctructoid.com

"I loved it!" - Anthony Carboni, Revision3

"...the pixel art and writing is spot-on." - Rachel Helps, Kill Screen

To play Noire Time click here.

CreaVures: The Nest (Sept. 2011)

A social game version of the CreaVures puzzle platformer game, which was created for the Taiwanese game market. The game combines aspects of social games like CityVille, with players building and maintaining a nest for their Creavure. Players also can gain access to the levels from the platform game by completing missions in the social game, or through micro transactions.

For the game I was the sole game designer on the game until the last month of development. I designed the game's economy, designed and wrote most if not all the mission text, designed the player level progresion among other things.

I also created a number of new social mechanics for the game to help provide players with more interesting social interactions, the most popular being an idol that players could attempt steal from each other through an auction system. When they placed the idol in their Nest it increased the output of their plants and buildings, and thus was rather valuable to have.

I also had to coordinate with the games producers, programmers, and marketing team which were all located in Taiwan.

CreaVures: The Nest (in Chinese) click here

CreaVures (Feb. 2011)

CreaVures is a puzzle platform game (released on PC, Mac and iOS,) that I worked on while working at Muse Games. I started working on the game as a tester and consultant, but after a month I was hired to work full time as a game designer on the game. 

Aside from continuing to do testing of the game (by either playing myself, or managing other testers,) I also helped to design puzzles and levels for the game, coordinating feature requests with the project manager & programming lead, and working with the 3D animators on cut scenes.

CreaVures website: click here

Quest to Nowhere: Summer Days (Jan. 2010)

This is an experimental comic book point-and-click adventure game that I made for my Master's Thesis. The intention of the game was to see if the two mediums, comics and video games, could be successfully combined together in a meaningful way. 

For the game I did everything except draw the actual comic pages, which I hired an artist friend to draw for me.

You can play the game by clicking on this link: click here

I will include more information here, including the thesis paper, after it is completed.

Picture the Impossible (Fall 2009)

This is a game I worked on in my Interactive Multimedia Project classes where we built the Alternate Reality Game (or Augmented Reality Game,) with/for the local Rochester newspaper, the Democrat & Chronicle. During the Spring ’09 class we designed the game, creating a design document, and also started to work on some of the basic content for the game once it started.

During this time I was working on a number of different aspects of the game including, but not limited to, writing of a hidden underlying narrative to the game, as well as designing some of the game systems and some of the web games. The game players were divided into three factions, each of which was assigned a charity based on their faction, and by playing games, or participating in various activities, players would earn points for their faction. Each week the faction’s charity would receive a donation, the largest donation going to the top scoring faction, the second most going to the second highest scoring, and the last place faction receiving the smallest donation amount.

During that Summer of '09 I continued to work on the game, and during this time the game was built. Then in the Fall of ’09 I took the Interactive Multimedia Project class again, during which the game was launched, and run. Running from Sept. 7 to Oct. 31. While the game was running I helped design some of the puzzles, mainly encryption puzzles for some of the hidden narrative aspects of the game. In the end the game had about 2,500 players; around 400 of which would be considered active players. For more information on the game you can visit the Picture the Impossible website.