Category: Game Dev

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Ludum Dare 48

For Ludum Dare 48 I teamed up with Eric Goodnight and Yousef Danak to make a game. Eric handled the graphics, Yousef the sound, and I did the coding. The theme was “deeper and deeper” and we ended up creating a beat em up game called “Just Call Your Mom”. In it you play as “The Kid” who’s trying to fight his way out of corporate office depression by trying to get to a phone and call his mom. It’s a pretty silly game but was fun to make and has been pretty well received by the Ludum Dare community.

If we had some more time it would have been good to have added a block button, some more varied enemies, and a more fleshed out story — but overall I think we did a fantastic job! Aside from being a bit rusty with Unity I think everything went extremely well. I definitely need to start teaming up with more folks. It was nice bouncing ideas off of each other and not having to do everything myself for a change.

Here’s a video of the game in action:

We were particularly proud of the “call your mother” voice over on the title screen.

If you’re interested you can play “Just Call Your Mom” on Itch.io. 🙂

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Boo Who Prototype

Here’s a little game prototype I made over the weekend with my pal Keeley.

You’re a little ghost possessing other characters in order to make it through each level. It was pretty fun to work on so far. Maybe we’ll spend some more time on it and build it into a more complete game.

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Ludum Dare 46

I participated in Ludum Dare 46 last weekend by making a game called CP-ARTY (CPR-party … get it). The theme was “keep it alive” so I made a CPR rhythm game where you’re doing chest compressions, mouth-to-mouth, and shooing off lookie-loos to the beat of a haphazardly thrown together track I created with SoundGrid.

You can play CP-ARTY online either on GitHub or Itch.io. Here’s a video of the game in action:

This is the first game jam where I used Unity and the game’s 3D-based which went much better than I was expecting and was a lot of fun animating the low poly characters in Blender. All of the feedback so far has been extremely positive so I may spent more time fleshing this out into a longer, more polished game. 🙂

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Localizing Toy Gun Office Simulator

Localizing Toy Gun Office Simulator

Aside from myself, I’m the only person within my family and group of friends that owns a VR Headset. This is more than a little concerning when I plan on releasing a VR Game that I want people to actually play. To get around this issue I’ve been localizing Toy Gun Office Simulator in order to make it playable by as many folks as possible.

For its initial launch on Steam it should be translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Ukrainian. I’m using I2 Localization in Unity which at least makes the coding part of this relatively painless. Although it has been interesting working through the design challenges involved in this effort and I’m hoping that it makes a difference in how accessible the game is.

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Shootout Level

Shootout Level

I’ve finished the fourth level Toy Gun Office Simulator will be launching with! In this one you try to survive waves of enemies trying to shoot you with their own toy guns. I tried to make this feel as close to how a toy gun fight would in an actual office with your co-workers and am really happy with how it turned out. This level’s definitely my favorite so far and the handful of folks I’ve had test it really enjoyed it too. 🙂

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Starting the Steam Submission Process!

I’m excited to report that my Steamworks Developer account has been approved and I’m currently going through the process of submitting the shooter game, which is now titled Toy Gun Office Simulator, to Steam! Here’s a taste of the game’s description:

Toy Gun Office Simulator is an action VR shooter where you test your mettle in four unique, atmospheric levels. Improve your sharpshooter abilities and survive as many waves of targets as your can!

I’d like to have Toy Gun Office Simulator released by the end of August — which nearly meets the “have one game self-published within a year” goal I had about a year ago when I setup Wanana, LLC.

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SHMUP Level

SHMUP UFO

I’ve been working on a SHMUP-style space level for the game. In it waves of targets move towards and past where the player’s standing. I was a bit concerned with motion sickness but since we’re doing this whole “augmented office” look-and-feel — having the persistent office scene that the game’s overlaid on seems to ground the player well and prevents them from getting sick.

SHMUP Boss

The level also has these boss waves that breakup game play and provides another challenge for the player to conquer. I’m pretty excited to have some folks play test this one!

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It’s Getting There

Shooting Neon Skeletons

As of this afternoon the skeleton level is done! Or at least done enough for folks to start play testing it. I’m a bit of a fraidy cat so it’s been a little stressful building this level where you really have to keep your head on a swivel. Overall I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. Above is a GIF of how things are currently looking.

I’m working on a space shooter level next. A lot of its components should already be built out from when I was prototyping things so hopefully finishing that level will mostly consist of putting a bunch of pre-existing pieces together.