Monthly Archives: July 2012

Moving Toward the Heart: Get Closer Postmortem

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[As part of our project, mindful xp is committed to documenting our progress – part of that is creating post-mortems for our games. Post-mortems are very candid about game details, so if you don’t want a game’s experience spoiled before you play, reading these might not be in your best interest.]

Get Closer was the final game created for the mindful xp project. It was an individual game created by myself about the difficulty with trying to get close to someone. As the last project in our semester, it was a pretty straightforward process to develop the game.

Development:

Get Closer is an offshoot of a previous game idea I was working on for the Ludum Dare 48 competition this April. The theme of the original Ludum Dare was “tiny planet” and the original game was called A System of My Own. In the game you controlled a planet trying to navigate around various solar systems and find the right orbit. However while the design for that never quite came together, I did take the main orbiting mechanic and adjust that for Get Closer.

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Lost Alone: Collect Postmortem

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[As part of our project, mindful xp is committed to documenting our progress – part of that is creating post-mortems for our games. Post-mortems are very candid about game details, so if you don’t want a game’s experience spoiled before you play, reading these might not be in your best interest.]

Collect was the end result of a long process developing my own individual round game. Initially I had hoped to develop an entirely different game based on an experience that was very personal to me. In the end though I was not prepared to develop that experience into a game that I felt could clearly communicate everything that I had hoped. Instead of releasing something that I felt was substandard I instead changed tracks and released something less personal and could be realistically achieved within the time constraints of our project.

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Going Through the Grind: Scott Told Himself Postmortem

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[As part of our project, mindful xp is committed to documenting our progress – part of that is creating post-mortems for our games. Post-mortems are very candid about game details, so if you don’t want a game’s experience spoiled before you play, reading these might not be in your best interest.]

Scott Told Himself was the 3rd game we developed for the mindful xp project. Or at least the 3rd we started. 1 month later we released Scott Told Himself after we developed two more game projects and finishing it during our spring break.

So what happened? Why did we stop Scott Told Himself in the middle of development? A lot of went wrong with Scott Told Himself could be filed under typical mistakes made while learning how to work together as a team. Thankfully though we as a team learned to grow through these mistakes and learn how to effectively work as a team going forward.

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The Path Taken Postmortem

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[As part of our project, mindful xp is committed to documenting our progress – part of that is creating post-mortems for our games. Post-mortems are very candid about game details, so if you don’t want a game’s experience spoiled before you play, reading these might not be in your best interest.]

The Path Taken is a prototype developed in Flashpunk over the course of 11 days (originally planned for 7 days). In this game we wanted to model the feeling of regret and “the grass is greener on the other side” mentality. You play as Ward, a boy going through a rite of passage in a dungeon and learning a few things about life along the way.

Development

When we were brainstorming we went over a few ideas and eventually came across the idea of choosing multiple paths. However when choosing a path the player would have to make a hard choice and whatever the player choose it would have to seem like the wrong choice. We thought we could literally do this by having the other path visible but inaccessible so the player would be able to see what they had missed. We also wanted the game to have permanence and every time the player chose an action even if they started the game over the choice would persist.

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Controlling Postmortem

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[As part of our project, mindful xp is committed to documenting our progress – part of that is creating post-mortems for our games. Post-mortems are very candid about game details, so if you don’t want a game’s experience spoiled before you play, reading these might not be in your best interest.]

Controlling is a flash game made using the Flixel in less than 48 hours for the Ludum Dare Game Jam 23 by me (Dan Lin). The art was done in Gimp and the sounds and music was done in OpenMPT Tracker. You play as a guy in this puzzle platformer. The main mechanics involve the absence of jumping, wrapping around of the stage, and being able to move around blocks and placing them using the mouse. The player progresses through the levels.

Development

Because this was a Ludum Dare Game, the theme for the game jam was “Tiny World.” This worked out for me as I already had some ideas that fit in nicely with the theme. I wanted to make a game about someone who could only rearrange what he had and never create something new. In terms of the theme, this meant that this person’s perspective was limited and that even though he could control everything he had, he would never be able to see what was outside of this. Hence, from the outsider’s perspective, they could said his perception of the world is tiny. The idea for this game arose from discussion with a friend and my own personal experiences. Continue reading →