Game Bootcamp

Sweep Miner is Game Bootcamp's first ever collaboration! It all started last Friday, when my brother visited me in California. I told him I was looking for new game ideas. Without missing a beat, he proposed this game. It was such a good idea that I dropped everything and asked him to work on it with me. Just like that, a team was formed! I programmed and animated, he handled the level design and mechanics. Together, we created Sweep Miner in a frantic week.

Hello friends! You're all looking quite dashing today. Did you get a haircut?

The concept for Shave Time! was born (unsurprisingly) while I was at a barbershop. It was an old-school place: the kind where you can get a hot-lather shave and warm towel pat down. Something about the smells, colors, and sounds clicked in my mind. This barbershop had to be in my next game.

Shave Time! was the most complex game I've coded in recent memory. Shaving hair isn't a standard game mechanic, so it required some creative programming. Ultimately, the effect was achieved using masks and a sprinkle of particle effects. This game was also the hardest to balance, between all the characters, tools, and game modes.(If I had more time, I'd have liked even more characters!) This definitely took up both weeks.  Shave Time!'s greatest strength is its easily understood premise: shaving is fun. When I was young, I used to spray shaving cream on my face and pretend to shave it off. I attempted to capture that primal satisfaction within the game. The tools all work similarly to their real-world counterparts. Because the concepts are easy to grasp, the game is easy to pick up. Just start shaving! That's the power of resonance.  I want to give a shoutout to my brother for coming up with the name "Shave Time!". Thanks, bro!

Okay, so you really want me to describe it. I'd call Genesis a minimalist, biblically inspired art-game. So pretentious sounding! This game is something completely outside of my normal comfort zone. When it comes to game-making, I drift towards straightforward, arcade games with a quirky twist. So, how did I end up making something so far out? It all started two months ago when I was working on a little game called "Fishtank". It involved cells eating other cells and multiplying into newer more complex forms. The game was never finished, and eventually I lost the files to corruption. This week, I thought it would be a good idea to take a second crack at it. But as development progressed, I found myself dissatisfied with the complex organisms. They worked, but something about their shapes were less beautiful than the simplicity of a square. They were somehow less... divine.

Week 2 has come and gone, and I feel like I'm getting into a groove. Game BootCamp is challenging me to think outside the box, and take the work more seriously than ever before. I blame that on the random nature of my topics.Garbage & Recycling? How does that translate into a game?  The mechanic that popped immediately into mine was sorting garbage into one bin, and recycleabes into another. The player would have to quickly sort falling items into two piles, depending on their type. It seemed fun, but there was an issue: That game was remarkably similar to the Game & Watch classic Oil Panic. Simply put, it felt like a ripoff. No matter how I tweaked the idea, it seemed like a sub-par version of the existing game. Then, I remembered something from my time studying with Noah Bradley: master studies. We would recreate the paintings of old masters to better understand what made them tick. It only seemed natural that I should attempt a videogame study, and go with the flow instead of fighting it. And that is how Acid Panic was born.

Wow! What a week. From the start, the process was challenging, exciting, and frightening. So, let's examine how we ended up with Viking Breakfast: The prompt was "Destroy All Lands". Naturally, I started making a list of things known for large-scale destruction: Kaiju, nukes, wars... barbarians! The initial idea hatched quickly: you would play as a viking, maraud across the land, and destroy things to earn points.