CREST OF C's ~ Project Timeline

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2Q24

MAKE A GOOD MEGA MAN LEVEL 3

MaGMML3 Title Screen
  • Release Date: Jun 9, 2024
  • Made By: The MaGMML Team
  • Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun, Narrative
  • My Role: Writing, Level Design, Boss Design, GML Programming, Trailer Production, QA Testing

More Info Make a Good Mega Man Level 3 (or MaGMML3 for short) is the third installment in the Make a Good Mega Man Level series. Like its predecessors, the game features community-created levels submitted as part of a level design contest, wrapped around in a package with a massive hubworld, hundreds of NPCs, a narrative, and lots of side content. The contest was originally held in 2018 and I participated. Out of 170+ submissions, mine was 9th place. After that, I was invited to guest-design a level for the postgame invite-only area, where I designed and also coded a boss for my entry. However, after many setbacks due to poor project management, the game was delayed until a new director took over earlier this year. That was when I was brought onto the team. With new management in place, the project was completed, and it's likely one of the biggest hobby game projects ever made. Here's the launch trailer I recorded, directed and edited:


When I was brought onto the team, my primary duty was to "salvage" parts of the script that were the result of decisions forced by the previous management that were too far in to cut. The "Rivals", a group of five colorful characters who were all part of the same in-universe tournament with their own motivations and ideals. Besides one, which the director had already taken and improved, they were very underbaked characters, with barely a page of information in their original documents. I took the most important parts and from scratch over the course of a week reconcepted and reinvented their characters, giving them proper arcs, writing NPC dialogue and cutscenes, and turning them into figures that the community fell in love with. Since MaGMML has a generally young demographic of teenagers, I tried to channel the energy of a shonen anime and have each character represent a theme or emotion I wanted to convey. Hunter Woman is a social recluse obssesed with her primary directive, Forge Woman is a construction worker whom Mega Man comes to romanticize as a "the ideal middle class citizen", Element Man is a boy who wants respect but is outcast due to his inability to communicate with words, and Presto is a jerk (there's always one!).
MaGMML Wiki Screencap with a ton of Yamato Man dialogues.


Additionally, in the case of one of them, Element Man, I ended up having to design his battle from scratch in a little over 12 hours to replace a previous concept. I wrote up a detailed specs document that served as a guide for the programmers and communicated with them to ensure it matched my vision, while taking into account their changes made for the sake of time and gamefeel. In the end, I came out of MaGMML3's development extremely proud, not only because my submission could finally be public to everyone, but because I also managed to imbue my soul into a group of characters that had meaning and things to say to the audience, and the audience loved. To cap this off, here's my 9th place entry, which I made back in 2018 and I'm still proud of:

HOP TOP

HOP TOP Promo Art
  • Release Date: February 27, 2024
  • Made By: MIRACLE
  • Keywords: Action, Arcade, Platformer, Shoot-em-up
  • My Role: QA Testing, Trailer Production

More Info HOP TOP is a 90s 32-bit remaster of a nonexistent 80s arcade classic. You control Hop as he jumps from platform to platform in endlessly rising levels while dodging around enemy insects and shooting back with flowers. You must try to survive as long as possible while taking down waves of enemies across the many floors of the tower, with mechanics such as falling platforms and crumbling ice. I was involved in QA Testing since the early stages of development and helped provide feedback which shaped the final specs of many of the game's systems. Additionally, I was in charge of the trailer production. Mostly, I was tasked with following the director's crystal clear vision of how they wanted the trailer to be, but I was allowed some degree of freedom through which I crafted scenes that slotted into the director's vision and created an excellent end-result.

2Q23

BUSTED THRUSTERS

Busted Thrusters Title Screen
  • Release Date: November 25, 2023
  • Made By: HI-OCTANE VIOLENCE
  • Keywords: Action, Puzzle, Platformer, Euro
  • My Role: Game Design (Systems), Level Design, Writing

More Info Busted Thrusters is a one-button puzzle platformer developed for the 2023 1-Button Jam. The "one button" in this case, is utilized to control Kabuster's "Input Metronome", where a cursor bounces back and forth and you must stop it at the appropriate time to make Kabuster move in that direction, with there being inbetween slots that will flip the direction of the cursor if pressed. Timing and patience is required to make it past all kinds of hazards throughout a single long stage. If you get hit once, you'll die and respawn back at a checkpoint flag. Make it to the end, and Kabuster will grow huge and fight his nemesis Darkabuster in a Punchout duel, also controlled with a single button by utilizing the input metronome to both dodge and try to hit the dodging Darkabuster. Your time, deaths and amount of Kabucoins collected throughout the stage will all add up your score.
Kabuster fighting Darkabuster.


Busted Thrusters' Input Metronome system was originally concepted by two of the other HI-OCTANE VIOLENCE developers, who also came up with a very preliminary first draft of the boxing duel (planning it more as an RPG battle). It was my job to take their ideas and mold them into something concrete. I refined, polished and tweaked basically every single parameter of the Input Metronome. With the boxing duel, I drafted all of the exact specs for how it would operate, from how dodging would work exactly, to how Darkabuster would dodge your attacks with each hit they took. Finally, I came up with all of the hazards that are used in the final level, and designed the level on my own.


I'd say my role in Busted Thrusters was the archetypical game designer role of giving life and shape to vague concepts and translating them into mechanics. No game jam game is perfect. Busted Thrusters suffered from being particularly ruthless, with the level being too challenging and long for many who couldn't adjust to its 1-HP gameplay and the workings of the Input Metronome. In spite of this, I believe it to be a pretty polished experience and a pretty fun time. For my part, it was a fun design exercize and experiment. I also wrote the game's itch.io page. It's playable on browser!

2Q22

RAGE KABUKING

RAGE KABUKING Title Screen
  • Release Date: August 13, 2022
  • Made By: HI-OCTANE VIOLENCE
  • Keywords: Action, Top-Down, Arcade, Endless, Shoot-em-up
  • My Role: Game Design, Writing

More Info RAGE KABUKING is a score-based top-down twin-stick shooter in which you play through an endlessly looping set of 60 stages firing bullets in all 8 directions as the eponymous Rage Kabuking. It's a freeware indie game made for the LOWREZ JAM of 2022 and as such, the entire game takes place on a 64x64 screen resolution. We knew going in we wanted to make an action game, and quickly the idea of making it an endless score-driven game came up, since it wouldn't require coding gravity or complex collision. One of the devs suggested playing as a floating oni mask, through which we decided to make all of the game oni and Japanese myth-themed, and I came up with the name Rage Kabuking on a whim.

RAGE KABUKING's main mechanic is the "trials" system, where each "floor" of The Shogun's tower (aka each room/level) tells you at the start what the goal of that room is (with a simple verb declaration: KILL!, EARN!, SURVIVE!, etc.), and you have to complete that goal in order to unlock the exit. The room types are "KILL!" in which you must defeat every enemy in the room to unlock the exit, "EARN!" in which you must collect a series of coins spread throughout the room, "SURVIVE!" in which you must survive until a timer depletes to 0, "RUN!" which has you running from a wall of fire chasing you from left to right, and "BOXES!" a special room type which has you solving Sokoban-type puzzles. Whilst the rooms are all handcrafted as opposed to being procedurally generated, they are thrown at the player in a completely randomized order (minus BOXES! rooms which only start appearing once you live up to a certain point). After the player goes through 60 rooms, they face The Shogun in a boss fight, and from that point onwards all enemies become more aggressive or gain extra functions, this is dubbed "Further Loop Mode". Additionally, every subsequent 60 rooms The Shogun gains a new attack, until he caps out after two extra attacks.

Whilst RAGE KABUKING suffered from not being playable on browser (due to the fact we couldn't afford GMS2's HTML compiler), it still ranked exactly 40 overall out of hundreds of submissions, and 18 on the gameplay metric alone. For my part, I was one of the main contributors of enemy patterns, doing research into different oni types, coming up with attack patterns and assigning appropriate ones. I helped shape the trials system alongside the other two devs, and was generally involved in basically all game design discussions since we were a small team of three. I ended up designing a little over half of the game's 60 unique rooms, with the rest being designed by MiniMacro Sound. I also came up with the Further Loop Mode system and all of the enemy pattern changes therein. I also wrote all of the readme "manual" and the itch.io page.

Our goal with RAGE KABUKING was to make a replayable experience that felt different every run, despite being handcrafted and done in a limited amount of time and resolution space. If we had more time I would've liked to add even more enemies and propose a system in which rooms are tiered by difficulty in the code and the RNG system gives the player rooms with difficulty dependant on how many rooms they've cleared in that run. But for the time we had I think we succesfully developed a charming game that met its goals and was enjoyed by those who played it. Here is a video of a blind playthrough by Darenn Keller.

2Q21

MAKE A GOOD 48-HOUR MEGA MAN LEVEL

MaG48HMML Title Screen
  • Release Date: September 6, 2021
  • Made By: The MaGMML Team
  • Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun, Shmup, Narrative, Contest
  • My Role: Direction, Game Design (Systems), Level Design, Boss Design, GML Programming, Writing, Trailer Production

More Info Make A Good 48-Hour Mega Man Level, or MAGMML48H for short, is a freeware fanmade Mega Man game that compiles over a hundred levels that were made as part of a level design contest in which contestants were challenged to make a level under 48 hours with randomized assets. The stages were ranked from worst to best and wrapped in a package with a large sprawling hubworld, a narrative involving themes of family and self-worth, and a lot of sidequests and other esoteric mechanics. I was originally just a helper in the project, but was assigned to be co-director and project lead after the original director became too busy with college.

The scale of the project and a lot of ideas had been pre-conceptualized, such as the game's setting in a cruise ship and the general premise of the cruise ship being held hostage by a gang of original villains. However, a lot of the specs and the nitty-gritty of the game was nebulous as most of the focus went to compiling the entry stages. When I took over my number one priority was to make the project "realistic" and setting a scope by writing detailed documents around, first and most importantly, the hubworld. I believed this would be the most arduous task visually, and the most complex element of the entire package, and therefore by giving it specs and numbers we could set boundaries with which to contain the rest of the game.

During development I had never ever gone to a cruise ship, nor did I ever have a "luxurious" vacation, so aesthetically I wanted to lean into the childish whimsy of the Mega Man series by focusing not on realism necessarily, but a youthful sense of "believability." Essentially, making the cruise ship have every idea of opulence a kid would have: elegant restaurants, far too large indoor pools, golf courses with fake blue skies, etc... All of these areas are self-contained as "Tiers" with multiple levels, all connected by a single hub area which contains important shops the player will revisit multiple times.
MaG48HMML Tier Screnshot


This central hub area contains all of the game's core systems in a single place. The starting point for all of these systems was two concepts, one imposed on me by the original director, and another that I sort of "read the room" on: The first concept was "No standard shop", as the original director thought that finding a good stage to grind for E-Tanks was a core part of Mega Man and thus didn't want a traditional shop for items. The second concept was "Make the player have fun even in demanding situations.", as the devteam realized that a lot of the entries were quite harsh, as to be expected of stages made in only 48 hours. Based on these, and combined with a third concept I wanted to explore ("The extraordinary in the ordinary.") I designed the main hub area as having multiple different "rooms" containing eccentric characters with personal little stories you can grow attached to, while each one containing a different system I designed to make playing even the harshest stages fun without just making them easier, or simply ways to encourage replaying stages to collect Bolts.

Through the "King of Birds" Deleuze Pipi, the player can spend Bolts to upgrade their pet bird Beat, who starts the game by default with the ability to pull Mega Man out of bottomless pits, and can be upgraded to heal the player, attack enemies, and collect hard-to-reach items; as well as a more esoteric upgrade that changes the way he whistles, to make him feel more alive and to add some charm. Through the lovey-dovey couple Nu'o and Bol'o the player can buy costumes and equip them to customize their experience. And, finally, the most complex system, through the amnesiac engineer Joseph the player can make playful, unique upgrades for Mega Man (ranging from a weapon energy halver to the ability to make Mega Man spin in place) through combining pieces of "Junk", pieces of random memorabilia that can be obtained by doing Sidequests for special NPCs scattered around the ship. All of these are characters I wrote and designed, even if based on existing characters and tropes of the Mega Man franchise.

With the intent being to make the player think more about the levels the entrants crafted in unique ways, many of the Sidequests involve having to replay entries with unique challenges, such as disabling 8 bombs or only using a certain weapon. Others involve playing minigames utilizing the game's mechanics, such as sneaking into a kitchen through a stealth segment, or stopping a TV haunted by a ghost in a boss fight. Each Sidequest is contextualized as helping or playing with another guest on the ship (such as finding a paper bag for a seasick fellow, or doing a music quiz from a DJ) and being given a reward that's worthless in terms of "combat usability", but that has meaning to them. These are then combined by Joseph to form the upgrades. Though the Sidequest system has its snags as a whole, I tried to go for a system that didn't always feel clean and perfect, but one that felt alive, esoteric, and a little bit janky like the "mysterious" vibe some of my favorite N64 games had. The final sidequest in the game is purposefully meant to simulate a massive tedious fetch quest, as those are always a pain in games.

If it isn't obvious from the above, I put a lot of thought into the world alongside the mechanics, and I also conceptualized, planned and wrote the entire main script for the game including important cutscenes for the aforementioned systems as well as for all of the antagonist characters, thinking about the game's target demographic and seeking to accomplish a sincere, funny, and heartwarming story about criminals who've lost sight of their individual worth in pursuit of someone else's approval, and the slow gradual realization that they never needed it. Beyond the writing and all of these systems, I also manually designed many of the hub areas myself, and designed two of the game's final levels, each one done in 48 hours (minus revisions based on testing to create a more polished experience), and designed both boss fights (I coded one, while I wrote a detailed plan and directed a programmer for the other). One of these two stages was a shmup, which I designed trying to create a unique blend of the strengths of Mega Man level design with shmups I love.

My first and primary goal with MaGMML48H was to get the game out for the sake of the entrants as soon as possible. I smoothly lead development over the course of a little over a year, working with artists, musicians and programmers to make sure everyone was working within their limits and on tasks that they specifically would enjoy (as passion is of utmost importance in any devteam, but particularly freeware titles). My secondary goal was to create a game that would create lasting emotions, to make people remember and appreciate the levels that make it up more than if they were just connected by a menu. I've definitely grown a lot as a planner and director since, but I'm still very fond of it. Below is a video of the game's release date trailer which I directed, voice-directed and edited together myself.

ANNALYNN

Annalynn Steam Art
  • Release Date: January 29, 2021
  • Made By: Cruise Elroy
  • Keywords: Arcade, Action, Platformer
  • My Role: QA Testing

More Info Annalynn is a solo-developed 2D arcade platformer inspired by old Namco arcade games such as Mappy and Pac-Man. It absolutely nails the style both visually and mechanically, providing a simple yet addictive score-based blast through numerous levels in which you must maneuver around colorful snakes, each with their own AI, as you try to collect all the coins. I was a part of the small QA Team looking for bugs across all of the game's stages and their unique mechanics, as well as expressing opinions on the nature of certain mechanics, providing helpful feedback for the sake of a great final product. It's also out on Nintendo Switch!

2Q2Q

MEGA MAN PERFECT BLUE SAGE 2020 DEMO

MMPB SAGE Demo Art
  • Release Date: August 20, 2020
  • Made By: RRThiel and his Merry Little Gentlemen
  • Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun
  • My Role: Game Design (Systems), Level Design, Trailer Production

More Info MEGA MAN PERFECT BLUE is a freeware fanmade Mega Man game with an explosively colorful visual and musical style, primarily lead by artists with the intent of making a Mega Man game that's more attuned to our personal tastes as a team rather than trying to imitate the official games. Taking after the intent of the original Mega Man creator Akira Kitamura of every person crafting their own Mega Man, RRThiel created a beautifully indulgent vision of Mega Man as a loud, flashy, extravagant game with a challenging difficulty. Taking advantage of its fangame nature, it expects the player to already have familiarity with a variety of action games to produce a game that plays the strings of classics in an entirely new tune.

For the SAGE 2020 Demo, I was one of the main people pushing for us to make it to SAGE. Originally I was brought on purely for trailer production purposes, but I took over level design duties when the team was struggling and I entirely crafted the "Mega Man Intro Stage" seen in the SAGE Demo. I also came up with the Savebot Checkpoint system, which I thought would lean more into the strengths of the Mega Man aesthetic with colorful plushie-like robots by having the checkpoint be its own little character, and I authored the ladder jump mechanic, inspired by Shantae, which entirely changes the way the player interacts with ladders in a traditional Mega Man experience and opens up new vertical level design opportunities.


And, of course, following through with my original duty, I planned, recorded and edited together the game's announcement trailer. With some guidance and input from the game's director, he gave me a lot of creative freedom for certain parts which I used to craft the reveal of the secondary playable character in a funny, playful way which had an impactful reaction on the people who looked forward to it. The trailer has 281k views as of the time of writing this. Since 2020, I've become the co-director of the game and have continued to craft excellent levels, mechanics, and bosses, fulfilling the original vision of MEGA MAN PERFECT BLUE to the best of my abilities. Here's the game's announcement trailer:

MAKE A GOOD MEGA MAN LEVEL: EPISODE ZERO

MaGMML:EZ Title Screen
  • Release Date: June 26, 2020
  • Made By: The MaGMML Team
  • Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun, Narrative, Community Management
  • My Role: Writing, Level Design, Boss Design, GML Programming, Game Design (Systems), Trailer Production, QA Testing

More Info MaGMML: Episode Zero is a collaborative fangame lead by the team behind the MaGMML series. Unlike the other MaGMML entries which were contests, Episode Zero was a community project in which everyone tried to submit as many creative, unique stages as possible with the development kit provided, with support and feedback given by a Quality Assurance team which I was a part of. Unlike any Mega Man game, it features as the main character "Zero"... But not the Zero from the X series, rather a new Zero that necessitated an entirely new gameplay style from the ground-up. Though it took cues from multiple other action games, it results in a fresh experience.

I was a part of the devteam from the initial concepting phase of Zero's playstyle, though my main contribution was the addition of ladderjumping, inspired by the Shantae series, to add more vertical options around ladders and let players refresh their airdashes more comfortably. Most of my contributions, however, came once the systems were developed and tested. Once submissions started, I myself submitted three entries; two which were collaborations with a good friend (in which I was the creative lead in one, and she was the creative lead in the other; and we combined our ideas). One of these entries, "Mojo Dojo", is considered by many to be one of the best levels out of the 60+ in the game.

Once the submission period wrapped up, in which I balanced my own submissions with my duties as part of the QA Team, playing all submitted levels and offering the creators detailed, constructive criticism. I designed and programmed two story-important boss fights ("Ice Golem" and "SRARA Joe") and contributed with the game's writing. One of the main villains, the enigmatic SRARA Joe had his character concepted and written by me; and most ambitiously, I wrote unique dialogue conversations between Zero and the character "Yamato Man" for 95% of of the game's nearly a hundred boss fights. These conversations not only feature cheeky advice on how to deal with the boss' patterns, but also devolve into charming, witty banter with the two characters forming a classical manzai comedy routine in which the role of straight man flips between the hot-blooded old man, Yamato Man, and the poetic innocent warrior, Zero.
MaGMML Wiki Screencap with a ton of Yamato Man dialogues.

MaGMML: Episode Zero was an incredible experience to be a part of. To this day I feel proud I could see and support so many new people making cool, creative levels that wouldn't have gotten into game design otherwise. I also took great pride in the levels I made, and the amount of character I was able to pack into Yamato Man's dialogue. I think I was not only able to produce high quality content, but also help guide other people's passions and help make an excellent game together. I also directed and edited two of the game's three trailers. Here's the first:

COP MARIO

Cop Mario Title Screen
  • Release Date: January 3, 2020
  • Made By: Me, and my friends.
  • Keywords: Fangame, Freeware, Action, Platformer, Run n' Gun, Parody
  • My Role: Director, Game Design (Systems), Level Design, Boss Design, GML Programming, Writing, Trailer Production.

More Info Cop Mario is a game that I directed and developed in exactly a month with a small team of two developers and one musician. The deadline was kind of a self-imposed challenge, as I started the game as a birthday gift for a friend. While I utilized the Megamix Engine in GMS as a base for the game's physics and many assets, the entire game has a ridiculous 12 full-length stages, a hubworld, multiple cutscenes, dozens of unique enemies and boss fights. As the game's director I created an exciting environment where we would all work efficiently and be satisfied with our work at the end, without any painful crunch.

With a story based on a dream a friend had, the game has a satirical tone, with increasingly convoluted events playing out as the game goes on, with a focus on having a bizarre yet bizarrely grounded tone where "random" things are simply integrated as part of the worldbuilding, becoming normalized and funnier than just randomness for randomness' sake. The end result is an increasingly escalating bit with levels ranging from an overdesigned extremely easy tutorial to a Pizza Hut in Venezuela that's actually an evil plot by Dracula to drain people's blood. Working together with the other developers, we crafted levels that beyond just dialogue would be funny in the challenges they worldlessly presented. For my part, I designed seven of the game's stages, and wrote dozens of the game's jokes. In particular, the entirety of World 3, "Venezuela", was all made by me, speaking from the heart and satirizing both many Venezuelan commonalities and also the way the nation is perceived in the first world.


Cop Mario is a game that's silly, satirical, at times edgy, but full of heart. The way its levels are constructed is almost more like an art project than a game, which encapsulaets a lot of the tennants that I still chase even in more "formal" projects. It's also a proof of my ability to steer a ship and cooperate with others to produce a one-of-a-kind result within a deadline. When we released the game, we packaged it with two other jokey SMW Romhack "prequels" and I recorded and edited together this trailer:
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