The Project I entered the 2nd annual Global Game Jam at the University of British Columbia in early February 2010, an event where amateur game designers from across the world create and collaborate on a video game in just 48 hours. The theme of this year’s jam was “Deception,” and the game had to involve “A skunk, a monk or a punk.” I lucked out with a great team, and we set about trying to rapidly prototype an idea that fit these parameters. Working non-stop from Friday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 3 p.m., we fleshed out a game inspired by Peggle (who doesn’t love Peggle!) that involved two skunks stuck inside the belly of a monster. They find a tumor-like outgrowth named Mr. Pickles who shoots them out from his mouth, and they try to break out of this monster’s belly by ricocheting themselves off dead cells and...
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The Project As our final six-week assignment for George Johnson’s Visual Story class, our task was to create a game that explored aspects of journey, transition, and character development through an interactive game or film experience. We were asked to consider the mythical tale of Charon and his boat traveling down the River Styx, transporting dead souls who may or may not interact with one another. But its main tenants included the following: “The specific challenge for this exercise is developing strong characters.” The idea was that the more the user explores the game space or environment, the stronger any sense of the personality of one or more characters becomes. Also from the assignment instructions: “The nature of the player should be addressed and made clear within the project.” As with most of this course, we were also working to understand implicit vs. explicit narrative and what role these types of communication...
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