peng ink

Short: Corporate Zombies is a 3D overhead shooter/adventure game where you take the role of a simple cube farmer who finds that all his co-workers are turning into zombies.

Background: An amalgamation of Office Space + Resident Evil + my own adventures in the corporate world.

Descriptions: Slowly more and more of your co-workers are turning into zombies (a physical representation of their souls no less), and nobody notices but you. Eventually you find your own skin gravitating toward a dull shade of grey, so this calls for drastic measures! Quickly you formulate a plan to make work fun, on company time no less.

Goals: Spread joy to co-workers, and change everyone back into a human.
Fight against boss zombies, who would want to ruin your plans by burdening you with busy work and threatening pay-cuts.

Quests are similar to other adventure games (see LucasArts), usually involving the proper use of inventory. Since you’re an engineer, you can also modify and combine items to produce superior weapons or fun boosters. For instance, combining tea, creamer, sugar, and ice makes one mean milk tea. And with a little ingenuity, your ordinary Swingline can be turned into a powerful boss-warding weapon.

Graphics are cartoony and whimsical. In additon to the presence of zombies, colors cue the player as to the state of their co-workers; dull and gray offices turn vibrant and colorful after sucessful joy-bringing.

Hook: A good outlet for work-related frustration, non-standard gameplay, and fun and fancy free.

Reflection: Only three more weeks, that’s what I keep telling myself…

Short: Centris is a tetris clone where in addition to being able to rotate the pieces, you are also able to rotate the box where the pieces lie.

Background: Tetris with a bit of a physics twist.

Description: By pushing buttons, one can rotate the box left or right by 90 degrees. All pieces already placed in the box maintain their overall shape, but end up falling/changing position with respect to gravity. Other than that, the basic rules of Tetris still apply.

Hook: It’s a Tetris clone.

Reflection: Everyone sure loves Tetris. Writing concept descriptions for Tetris clones are really easy.

Short: Bende Beads is a puzzle game where the goal is to connect flexible strings of colored blocks of the same type as they fall from the sky.

Background: It’s somewhat of a mix between Tetris and Puyo Puyo.

Description: Given a rectangular bounding area, Bende Beads fall from the sky. Falling strings of beads are of multiple lengths, and can be rotated horizontally or vertically in the air. When a Bende Bead is stopped by a horizontal obstruction, from there you can control how it falls by using directional inputs. Single Bende Beads do not fall down if there is a hole and both surrounding beads are supported. More or less, they act in a simplified way that a string of beads would act.

The ultimate goal in Bende Beads is to eliminate as many beans as possible via color/appearance grouping. When a certain number of beads of the same type are adjacent, they disappear. Subsequent after elimination of middle beads, strings of beads are broken. From there they act as if they were recently placed down. In this way one can formulate combos.

In multiplayer, elimination of multiple beads and combos increase the number of penalty beads that fall on your opponent’s side.

Hook: Addictive combo based gameplay and face-paced human competition.

Reflection: I really love Puyo Puyo. Being slightly colorblind myself, the differences in the appearance of each Puyo made me finally able to fully enjoy a combo-based puzzle game for the first time. At the same time, I’d like to see a puzzle game where more stuff happens after the pieces is placed down, so Bende Beads was natural result.

Short: MatchHex is a 2D puzzle game where you rotate multicolored pieces and attempt to match up enough colors to form fully singule colored hexagons.

Background: Tetris, Puyo Puyo, Dominoes, Hex Tetris

Description: Everyone knows that a hexagon is made up of 6 triangles. Moreover, a field of hexagons fit nicely together – it is very easy to constitute many hexagons within the boundaries of other hexagons. Thus, by simple rotation, one can create a singular color hexagon from surrounding multicolored pieces.

Upon the formation of such a hexagon, it disappears, leaving a hole which is then filled by the surrounding pieces. Pieces slide off of each other following basic rules of gravity. This way, with careful planning one can create mutiple hexagon combos.

Reflection: But wait Greg, doesn’t this sound a lot like one of the new puzzle games in Nintendo’s bitGenerations GBA lineup? Why yes, you’re absolutely 100% correct. Ironically, only a few days before the release of dialHex gameplay videos, I had come up with the idea for nearly the exact same game during a five hour car drive. Of course, their design is much more polished, but the core gameplay is pretty much the same. Which invites the question, could Nintendo’s bitGenerations be a result of “forced creativity” as well?

Short: Window Play is a collection of minigames which all share the same common medium: a window covered in condensation. Users interact by drawing with a mouse controlled virtual finger and breathing on the window in game.

Background: A winter’s childhood game, a temporary canvas, and old school games.

Description: Game UI is drawn bit by bit as the game loads.

Old School:
Blank canvas – finger to draw, air to erase
Tic Tac Toe – with a friend or against a computer
Cleanup – Keep entire window clean as condensation tries to take over. Speed based on temperature gauge conveniently located next to the window. Cheaters use their shirt and wipe off the entire window (but get no points).

New School:
Window Snake – Like grand old snake games but specially designed for the window. Snake tail disappears gradually and in width as well as length (as naturally as condensation encroaches). Controls are by mouse and allow for smoother turning. Also available is the ability to breathe hot air on the window, decreasing the length of the snake drastically.

Window War – similar to the pen-and-paper war games when you played as a kid, turn based artillery style. Draw your own base, character, and projectile. The program will animate projectiles and explode the base.

Further ideas to be suggested by the youthful minds of fellow team members.

Hook: Shiny particle effects and nostalgia, pure and simple.

Reflection: Kids always find ways to amuse themselves on those long bus rides. Growing older, and becoming more aware of the sheer dirtiness of bus windows, I’ve since stopped my window art. There’s something poetic about drawing something that disappears in a short while, no?

Short: The Darwin Co. is an action role playing game for the PC where you obtain corporate advancement through the creation and subsequent “testing” of genetically engineered monsters, or GeneEngines™ (GE).

Background: Another variation on the tried and true monster raising and battling concept, except hopefully with a more interesting battle system than most. The entire game is set at a fixed angled top-down camera view.

Description: The game is set in a laboratory setting, starting with a basic tutorial on how to create your very own GeneEngine™. GE creation is fairly simple, choose from a list of basic RPG statistical traits, and invest points into each trait. Based on these traits, a base creature type is assigned.

The company’s main commodity is the production of these so called GEs, and in order to consistently improve the product, promotion within the company is only available in the most logical way: the design of a superior product. Of course, without testing everything is speculation.

“Let’s test!” The testing system is a fine euphemism for an all out cockfight. The screen shifts to a metallic battle room, and GEs are stationed across from each other. Battling is a mix of real-time and menu-based action. There are three button based actions: Attack, defend, and special use. Given that a GE may have multiple usable specials, one may bind a special to one of three easy access special buttons. Re-binding is available at any time from a menu screen. Mobility is controlled by directional keys, and is affected by stats and upgrades. GEs gain no exp, as it is recommended that one plays with different GE builds in order to win.

In Bruce Lee’s Game of Death fashion, each floor of the building is a level, with access to the next floor granted only after the defeat of all “enemies” (in this case your co-workers) . It follows that the boss of each floor is… well to avoid any puns let’s just call him the section manager.

With the defeat of certain employees, upgrades to your beastie are available, to be activated down in the lab. Upgrades include wings (of various sizes), harder skin (denoted by palette swap), spikes, various other stat upgrades, and special to be used during testing (like the all mysterious “laser eyes”). More or less, creatures maintain their base-look throughout, with add-ons rendered separately.

Easter eggs: Wearable items (hats, moustaches, and the lot). A certain stat combination unlocks the ultimate bio-weapon of them all: “mad box” (made famous from overhead shooter game Shotgun Debugger).

Hook: Figuring out new and surprising combinations to monsters, a battle system that isn’t entirely menu based, and finally getting that promotion that you deserve.

Reflection: No doubt the result of playing too much Fallout 2 recently, as well as reminiscing about the good old days of six hour Pokémon training sessions. Adding the corporate twist is probably an indication of my current status as the company lackey (intern) at work.

Some Quality Dialogue: “While you fools were busy playing God, I was busy becoming one!” – CEO of The Darwin Co., after applying GE upgrades to his own body.

subtitle:10 designs for a viable Game Creation Society project

In preparation for the first development period of the year, and perhaps some lofty goals of entering (and winning) the IGF Student Showcase, I decided to rough out as many possible interesting concept designs as I could in a somewhat short amount of time. The purpose of this exercise was to practice rapid conceptual design, have them written down for further discussion with potential team members, and finally see how far “forced creativity” could take me.

As always, an important thing to remember before evaluating these designs is that they are meant to span the time of one ore two college semesters, of which the many distractions of class, tests, and homework can impede development at any moment. So don’t be expecting Devil May Cry 4, although Katamari Damacy 3 Demo Version might be somewhat more within our grasp. For more about GCS Process and Policies, I direct you to the site.