Hey everybody!
Thanks for the great time at the Meaningful Play 2012 conference. We know some people were interested in our poster and might have not been able to get a good look at it, so here it is online for your convenience.
PDF: mindful xp poster
[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.
[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
Hey guys, Dan here. Controlling is the game I made for Ludum Dare’s 23rd 48 hour game jam. The theme was Tiny World. Some explanation of the game can be found on the Ludum Dare site.
Check it out here, on the Ludum Dare website, Kongregate, or Newgrounds!
[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.]
Emptiness is a flash game made using the Flixel engine in around 1 week and a half by me (Dan Lin). This game was an experiment to see if a game can be more meaningful if there is only one creator. The player is a square who has lost its center and the player needs to navigate through a dungeon and make friends in order to successfully find their center.
[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.]
Exhaust is a short flash game made in 1.5 days by mindful xp. The player holds space to drive a car. If the player lets go of the space bar, the car begins to drift off of the road. The game ends when the player realizes he/she needs to let go of the space bar and let the car drift off the road. The player is then presented a scene where the car drifts in an open meadow and the game ends.
Hi guys! So we’ve tried changing up our development process and these past two weeks we’ve been developing our individual games. For today we will be releasing my game, Emptiness.
Play it here, on Kongregate, or Newgrounds! And look forward to our upcoming games this week!
Hello everyone!
As mentioned The Path Taken was more of a prototype and not a finished game. We had a couple of concepts and mechanics in there and not all of them made the cut. I thought I’ll like to share some the art that didn’t (and some that did) make it through and talk a bit about our art direction.
So if it isn’t obvious Zelda played a big part in the visual style. We thought a dungeon crawler was a good genre to explore the feeling of regret and I looked at various Zelda games as a reference. However there are some design choices in the game that made a bit different. Let’s take a look at this process shot:
Hello guys! Ever wanted to know about our work-life balance? Here is a comic that talks about that.
