2024
HOP TOP
- Release Date: February 27, 2024
- Made By: MIRACLE
- Keywords: Action, Arcade, Platformer, Shoot-em-up
- My Role: QA Testing, Trailer Production
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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.2022
RAGE KABUKING
- Release Date: August 13, 2022
- Made By: HI-OCTANE VIOLENCE
- Keywords: Action, Top-Down, Arcade, Endless, Shoot-em-up
- My Role: Game Design, Writing
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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. Thiel 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.
2021
MAKE A GOOD 48-HOUR MEGA MAN LEVEL
- 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
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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.
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 tryign 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 showcasing one of the final stages in the game which I designed and tiled on my own in around 48 hours, capped off by a boss I designed and coded.
Annalynn
- Release Date: January 29, 2021
- Made By: Cruise Elroy
- Keywords: Arcade, Action, Platformer
- My Role: QA Testing
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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!2020
MEGA MAN PERFECT BLUE SAGE 2020 DEMO
- 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
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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 by myself the "Mega Man Intro Stage" seen in the SAGE Demo (as Roll has a completely unique intro stage designed by someone else). 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: