Video Memories is the first game made under our Crab Attack title. Not really sure if that means anything, but it’s like, trivia, or something. It was made for the maiden Asylum Jam in 2013, a contest with only one rule:

“You should not use asylums, psychiatric institutes, medical professionals or violent/antipathic/’insane’ patients as settings or triggers.”

VM was made in 48 hours, because we either really hate ourselves or can only manage to finish things under pressure. I wrote the script, built the house, did the art, decided the dialogue triggers, made a font.. the game really reeks of me. I had fallen in love with this sort of ray-casted  visual effect that they used in Wolfenstein3D. It hadn’t dawned on me that it could be used for spooks until I played Judith around 3 years earlier, and told myself if I could ever convince Hawk to do a silly horror game for a ‘jam’ that was the direction I wanted to take it visually. Looking back on the style now, it’s a fucking anti-aliased nightmare that shows I was really more focused on my narrative than I was the visuals. Continue..

Sew

[ tags: Video Memories ]

What joy it gives me to see this image

Taken from the readme file included with this gem:

Once upon a ninja is a game about Aya’s quest to find treasure, in order to save her starving village. The actual game revolves around Aya sneaking around a castle, trying to gain three treasures. Once she gets all three she can return to her village with them. But in order to get them, she must avoid being seen by the guards.

After you beat the game, you’ll be given a rank based on how fast you beat the game and how many times you’re caught. There are five ranks in all, try to get an A!

Based upon the fairy tale, “Jack and the Giant Beanstalk”

We’ll piece this a part in greater detail soon.

Sew

[ tags: Once Upon a Ninja ]

This is how you convince Hawk to let you have a rainbow waterfall

Sew

[ tags: Magical Unicorn Adventure ]

I really don’t remember anything about why we made this game. I’m not sure if it was for a contest, or if Hawk just pitched ‘let’s do an Easter game’ at me or what. Whatever the case was, we landed on the light-sacrilege of Jesus Christ: Bunny Rabbit Hunter.

Only the best pastel greens for Jesus

A wiki entry on the old SphereDev website says that the game was “Made in Sphere for Easter 2005.”, but doesn’t mention if this was part of a larger Easter contest. The genesis of this project isn’t the only thing hazy. According to an entry on Hawk’s old website, the development time of the project was only 3 days and we released on March 27th, 2005. I’m pretty sure that this was a largely Sew-project though, and the credits support this by giving me the sole “Design” credit. Continue..

Sew

[ tags: Jesus Christ Bunny Rabbit Hunter ]

The theme for the 2008 Annual OHR 48-Hour Contest was “nothing”, and Jimmy’s Vacation was “the absolute best interpretation of the theme possible“. For once you don’t even have to just take my word for it because despite all odds, Jimmy’s won the contest 10-7, whatever that means.We barely won, and thinking back on the entire thing prior to writing this, I wasn’t even sure if we had won or not. What I do remember about this project is how it felt like we were really getting one over on everyone. Everything we’d post felt like a jab, a secret we were trying to get everyone else to buy into. We got to be arrogant and full of bravado. Unfortunately no one else really entered. There was only one other entry, which is pretty weak for a 48-Hour Contest. In my mind I tell myself we just scared everyone off with our impressive screenshots and hype thread.

“You’re all screwed.”

Continue..

Sew

[ tags: Jimmy's Vacation ]

Lot of artifacting on grandpa here because I’m unobservant

Sew

[ tags: Jimmys Incredible Journey ]

I consider Project `C` to be my first real game project, even though I had made other “games” prior. It was created for the first and only 528 Hour Contest in early 2004. When the contest was first announced I was in development of my first game with SDHawk, but we didn’t have much direction and were just sort of fucking around with different ideas. The first idea during this period was Zombie Shovel Whack. It was supposed to be a Zelda-style game where you hit zombies with a shovel. We got as far as pixel-perfect movement around the map and swinging a shovel, neither of which were standard with the engine we were using at the time.

This gif came out flashy like Christmas

Zombie Shovel Whack, “Sdhawk.rpg”, or Project `A`, as it would later be known, had a short development time. The graphics were mostly modifications of earlier sprites I already had laying around, and everything that Hawk did for ZSW wasn’t insanely out of his comfort zone for the time.  I think the utter lack of direction killed this project, but we were young and a project dying quickly wasn’t the end of the world. I don’t even remember Project `B` at all.  Not even a little.

The 528 hour (22day) contest started on Jan 23rd 2004, six months after Zombie Shovel Whatever. The theme of the contest was simply “Simulation”, and we decided to make a horror game that simulated light. I don’t remember any debate about other ideas. Code named, then immediately actually named, Project `C`.

I remember being really proud of my ‘perspective’

Continue..

Sew

[ tags: Project `C` ]