Bully and Cutie - Game with overbearing sibling.

From Evernote:

Bully and Cutie - Game with overbearing sibling.

A point and click mechanic features a pair of little characters trying to win through a labyrinth of incarceration and rewards. So far, so Machinarium.

You control neither directly, but as in Machinarium, one of them becomes your focus. In this game the companion slowly emerges as a rather irritating bully and overbearing sibling. The injustice of this characters little crimes of snatching, pushing past and selfish decisions over his smaller friend, become the players driving motivation. The game offers more and more ways to help the underdog. You are still getting them through the game, solving puzzles etc. But their relationship is an engrossing second strand allowing you to hand out some just deserts. You let the little one get the larger trifle… you take advantage of the fact that the greedy one will make selfish decisions. The game satisfaction is in being the equaliser for this abusive little relationship.

An authoring tool from the Frankenstein for iPad people…

Announcing Soon…

http://www.inklestudios.com/for-writers

Game flow diagram of transaction car crash

Because of various game-currencies in a client's social site, there were some peculiar scenarios we needed to map:

If you wanted to play a particular task, you needed enough 'Energy'. Fair enough, but if you were low on this, you needed to 'eat' some game food to increase your energy.

You need to buy the food with 'Gold' - the game's currency for virtual goods. Sorted. What's that? You're out of gold? No problem, you can get more gold by converting another currency 'Coins' - into Gold.

Done. No wait, if you don't have any coins, you can buy some for Facebook credits.

Yeah. Like that.

Ooh, I didn't mention Turbo Boosts. For your game also they are! … oh well

But this stuff doesn't drive me crazy any more, because I have my diagram, and no matter where I'm playing or how little I have of any currency, I am always SOMEWHERE in the flow, on my diagram.

Twitter has 7 things on it's nav bar - 2 of them are okay.

Another itch I had to scratch - my niggles with the lack of clarity in Twitters web UI.

Click to enlarge.

Balloon animation

Flash animation for a sequence at the start of a game site's welcome message.

It is achieved with lots of simple 2D tween animations. All hand done in timelines. Most little turns and moves are layered and nested in different length timelines - so that it becomes quite arhythmic and organic.

(download)

I usually use durations of prime numbers 91 frames, 73 frames etc. - so that no two sequences will ever sync up and reveal the loop.

I'm tweening the rotation of the balloon face words with the outer edge of the baloon - so the glossy gradient doesn't rotate and looks more like reflections and lighting.

I'm always surprised at the things you realise you DON'T need to do in a particular sequence: I was sure I would have to shape tween the string so it looked floppy enough in the wind but, actually, Mylar balloon ribbon look pretty convincing staying rigid.

It started looking a lot more airborne once I added the little flutters on the other ribbon parts - seems to convey the wind buffeting it around.

I had a problem with using real text on the balloon - it was pixel snapping. I used bitmaps in this and hope to have the final solution coded.

I have included the FLA for anyone who wants to explore how it's put together.

Click here to download:

BalloonSolo20120415_1305.fla (67 KB)

They Gather To Dismember

Final Design : My best friend Stephen Santer wrote a radio play that is being performed during Penzance Literary Festival.

"Did **** Put You Up To This?!" Comedy delivery game.

This round in the U.S. series of Who's Line Is It Anyway? has some nice options for turning into a video based game.

From Wikipedia:

Two Line Vocabulary: Three performers enact a given scene. Two of the performers are limited to using only two specific given lines each. Colin was the character who does not have specific lines to say in all but one episode where his role was swapped with Greg Proops.

As you can see the phrases chosen are often cinematic clichés:

- Did Harry put you up to this?

- Thanks but no thanks!

- Ain't that the truth!

- This looks bad

- How do I know you're not lying ?

- Were you followed here ?

Game Concept

A game version could involve animated characters or video footage of a character scene.
It would have a baked in dialog for character 1 and a hidden track of values representing when the the use of the other two characters lines would be most funny.

Players play along with the dialog, poised to click buttons to deliver their given phrases at the best times. Poor uses of the lines score negatively - and combos between players carry top marks.

The game could use existing film footage e.g From "O Brother Where Art Thou?" players watch the barn scene and try and insert the shot or dubbed audio of George Clooney's character saying "We're in a tight spot!" in the funniest places.

It would be a good game for a reality show like Big Brother, too. Inserting some more well known of the inmates non-sequiturs into regular footage of house conversations .