• Dad n’ Me
• Cannon Bods
• Portal Defender

Dad n’ Me

Dad n’ Me (DnM) is a multi-level, side-scroll, smash and bash game from Dan Paladin and Tom Fulp. Wearing a white mask, one plays as the purple biped beating and bullying kids. The player can interact with the environment like picking and throwing elements or exploding them by punching it. DnM also features a  mini-soccer game which provides good game-play variation. As of today, the game has received over 15 million game plays and has been well received by the Newgrounds community.

Studying the user-experience flow of DnM, this game has a large number of stopping screens. This is probably because the game art assets were updated later to accommodate new information. The updated splash and end pages of the game serves as a callout box to the release of the console game by the same creators. Both the intro animations and the death animation are well integrated into the story.

Cannon Bods

Cannon Bods is matching game at heart, where one has to shoot matching pirates out of a cannon to the parachuting pirates raining from the sky. Use the mouse to control the angle and strength of the cannon shots and create a chain reaction with well placed pirates that rebound off the edge causing more damage. The game is filled with a few surprises and is worth a good casual game. As of today, the game has received over 186k  game plays.

Looking at the user-experience flow of Cannon Bods, the starting experience contains two advertisements and the gamer previews the splash. The game requires at least three clicks to get to the game-play.

Portal Defender

Portal Defender is a hack-n-slash side scroll game that pays homage to Castle Crashing the Beard and Pico Blast. One gets to play as Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin or unlock any of the remaining four players. Using a variety of moves, fight a large range of bad guys and mini bosses. The game has received over two million game-plays.

For a game with a well-deserved long play, Portal Defender can be justified for it’s relatively large number of screens before game-play. The end animation is very simple and gives the user the choice to jump back to the character selection page. This offer the gamer a variety of choices with these mixed game variables.

Studying these there games, we can point out that all the three games have a bunch of screen stoppers that serves as a marketing/ad-revenue generating model. This is a necessity as it is one of the many ways to monetize  indie-based web games. I guess the big challenge for game designers is to find a good balance of UX and screen stoppers.The basic need to fulfill this requirement would be to create a smooth and uninterrupted game UX, yet be profitable to the developer.

Wall Defender MX is a pet project in development. It’s a clone of Bomb Software’s 1983 Atari Game by the same name. This game take a bit at the lone spaceman defending his last place in space, defending the dysfunctional dead-space fortress as it drifts though Xorthor territory and other space bandits zones. The Video-cap featured here is a preview of art development of the game.

Note to self: not all clients like games that are based off gambling.

Slow-motion study of the robot transformation.

KSM is a side scroller 2D pixel-style game with a multitude of enemies and equal number of special combo moves as the player hacks and slashes his way though the kingdom in search of treasures.

KSM is only a test game and will be made with Stencyl (Flash game maker). Working on this mini project would give me an opportunity to collaborate with other Stencyl behavior programmers and strengthen my knowledge on how to make a solid game with Stencyl.

Related posts: Red Knight, Red Knight Gets Down.

I’ve turned in the mini test game over to the Stencyl community for peer review and am hoping to get a talented programmer who can help out with all the behaviors that I was unable to tackle. So for now, here are some level screen shots of the game!

Want to read more about the development? Check these earlier posts:

• Enclave – Concept Designs
• Enclave – Character Run Cycle
• Test Game Play
• Learn How to Make a 2-Frame Walk Cycle

Got the run-cycle nailed down correctly in Flash, but it doesn’t look like the best cycle. For now it helps my purpose so I’m going to stick with this.

Concept art for the main character. Run-cycles coming up next.

Well, a big thanks to Kickstarter for featuring our game.

Anther shout-out from GameSetWatch!

Another shout-out for Indie Jones @Blodic.us, sweeet!

And Nobuooo too!

To learn more about Indie Jones, go here.

Game development is really fun, especially figuring out timing on different characters. Here’s a preview of what this bot’s walk cycle would look like.

Recently, Nate mailed saying that he’s uploading his documentary to Kickstarter, asking netizens of the Interbutt to help fund his movie. We spoke about other ways to get this message out there so that more people could support this project. My friend and I have been working on a concept to make this message go a bit more viral. We’re also on a tight deadline to get this completed before the Kickstarter deadline. (Project funding closes on September 1, 11:59 pm EDT)

The concept is quite simple: one plays as Nate, the Indie(ana) Jones who is being chased by this big boulder of time to get all the funding he needs for his project. He needs to collect every little gem he comes across and avoid pitfalls and dodge objects that come across his way.

After we worked out a list of art and animation assets to be made, I roughed out some concept art for the game play and dived right into the style that I wanted the game to look like. First targeting the character designs, turnarounds and run cycle.

Now Nate doesn’t look anything like the character and I felt that I really needed to tweak the art style or do a completely different approach to make the character look more like the reference. Deciding to go 8-bit style, I was able to get Indie to look exactly like Nate…
For the technically curious, Pixel Tools, v2.0 pixel plugin by the neuroscientist Patrick Mineault, is a boon to Flash artists/animators everywhere. I was able to work around the bug that kept crashing Flash.

This game style is a bit new to me as I haven’t worked much on this patience-draining-yet-worth-every-second art approach.

Will keep you posted on further updates.

]]> http://www.devilsgarage.com/analysis/everything-by-everyone/feed/ 3 http://www.devilsgarage.com/analysis/project-x-game-development/ http://www.devilsgarage.com/analysis/project-x-game-development/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:32:52 +0000 Diablo http://www.devilsgarage.com/?p=2721

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

This is a small animation that I created for the instructions page for the game mentioned in an earlier post. I’ve included the Flash source file so that anyone can use it for their non-commercial/personal projects. Feel free to download the FLA file and create your own animation with these assets!

The audio track is by REECEY-BOY

I’ve received quite a few requests to create a tutorial on how to rig characters for animation and games. That article will soon be covered.

Cheers!

The character went through a bit more evolution and I fine-tuned the colors so it’s easy to animate. I decided not to use strokes or lines so as to keep the animation easy and that way the turnaround time for the assets would be quicker.

Run cycles of the Kid from Vault 101.

Been playing quite a few “escape the room” games over the last few days. Just did a small test to see if this is worth exploring.

PS: Yup, those “high” beams from the lamps will surely cause a China Syndrome.