Category: Games

Cowtastrophe

Cowtastrophe is the game I worked on for the 2015 Global Game Jam (Jan 23 .. 25). It’s sort of a co-op cow sandbox score attack thingy.  We start by assuming a perfectly spherical cow…

Premise

Overlord Phil has ordered all of his minions (that means you and up to three of your friends) to bring him cows, lots and lots of cows!

What do we do now? Cooperate to make Phil happiest or compete against the other minions to raise your status. Poor cows…

https://vine.co/v/OFPxulgKPDI/embed

How to play

  • Gather cows and deposit them into the ‘teleporter’ (marked by a hovering sphere) to gain points.
  • The overlord is a very fickle boss, changing the desired type of cow frequently. If you fulfill his current order, you’ll get lots of points, but any old cow will keep him pleased for a bit.
  • Feed cows hay first to fatten them up.
  • Keyboard+Mouse:
    • WASD to move
    • Mouse to look around
    • Space or Left-Mouse-Button to activate your cowscoop
  • Gamepad:
    • Left Stick to move
    • Right Stick to look around
    • A to activate your cowscoop

Team

Additional credits:

Download

Download the full package (including project files) or just the packaged game.

Tested on Windows and Mac, but the packaged release is for Windows only.  Multiplayer requires multiple gamepads (use the ~ key to enter the console and type  to add a 3rd or 4th player).

Tappy Chicken

Tappy Chicken is the first UE4 game shipped on mobile platforms.  It’s a very accessible one-button game, and you can download the entire game source assets and blueprints from the UE4 marketplace for free.

The shipped version targets the following platforms:

  • iOS: iPhone 4 / iPad 2 or above, running iOS 6 or above.
  • Android: Devices with an OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU that run API level 9 (Android 2.3) or above.
  • HTML5: Browsers that support WebGL (Latest Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Opera)
Download it from the App Store
Get it on Google Play
See the HTML5 Page

Tappy to Flappy!

Socket Saga


Socket Saga is a deck-building card game where your vision of the cards shapes their behavior. Socket together cards and lock in edges to activate their abilities.

Earn internet monies, slay memes, and defeat your opponents for everlasting honor.

Developed during the 2014 Global Game Jam with Nick Darnell. Check out the card list and rules here, or the GGJ site for more pictures.

Undead Man Lover

Undead Man Lover is the game I worked on for the 2013 Global Game Jam at the NC State location.

The jam started off rough due to a nasty winter storm, which prevented us from meeting on Friday night. We did pitches/team formation thru a combination of mumble, google+, and a wiki. Thankfully the roads cleared up enough to open the jam site on Saturday around 1 pm and we were able to jam in person for the rest of the weekend.

How to Play

  • As one of the last humans alive, you need to love you some zombies to save the human race.
  • Revive zombies and help the un-undead escape thru the portal.
  • Zombies love beating hearts, distract them with yours.
  • Spells and running take a toll on your heart.

Controls

This game can be played with a keyboard or a gamepad.

Keyboard controls:

  • Arrow keys – Movement.
  • Z – Revive the nearest zombie.
  • X – Repulse nearby zombies.
  • C – Meditate to calm your heart.

Gamepad controls:

  • [Left Stick] – Movement.
  • [A] – Revive the nearest zombie.
  • [B] – Repulse nearby zombies.
  • [X] – Meditate to calm your heart.

Download

Download either the full package or just the game.

You need the XNA4 redistributable package to play the game:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914

Concept

The theme was [sound of a beating heart], and we had initially been stuck in a rut creating ideas that were just ‘it’s like X but’… ‘ you manage heartrate’ / ‘in a heart’ / ‘to the beat’. After a few of these, Nick and I threw some heart-related words into the venerable madlib generator and went thru the list.

“Undead Man Lover” was one that immediately clicked, although some of the off-theme ones looked good too (maybe for a future jam…). Our final game ended up surprisingly close to the initial pitch, with only a shift from a post-apocalyptic cityscape to a fantasy setting due to art availability.

Credits

Jammers:

Additional content used under license from:

Exploding Slime Painter

This past weekend was the 2012 Triangle Game Jam. Our theme was game titles generated by madlibs: everyone contributed a list of 5 adjectives, 5 nouns, and 5 verb stems, and a program generated random game names from them. From there, we pitched ideas based on the titles and formed teams.

There were a lot of good titles, but the one I pitched and ended up making into a game is Exploding Slime Painter.  The team consisted of Mike Daly, Michael Noland, and Frank Voelker, with some sounds from Ash Gowland.

Downloads

How to Play

It’s a score-attack game for one or two players trying to paint objectives in their team color, but take time to watch in delight as slimes wobble around and explode.

  • Explode slimes to earn points and unleash their colorful painting goo
  • Paint and hold objectives in your color for a big ongoing score
  • Kicked slimes will explode on impact, giving you bonus points

Controls

Best played with an Xbox 360 controller, but can be played on the keyboard as well.

Player 1 (Red):

  • Use the arrow keys or the left thubmstick to move around
  • Press [RightCtrl] or gamepad [A] to kick slimes in front of you
  • Hold the kick button down to charge the kick, sending them father
  • Hold [RightShift] or gamepad [B] to summon red slimes to your side

Player 2 (Blue):

  • Use the arrow keys or the left thubmstick to move around
  • Press [Space] or gamepad [A] to kick slimes in front of you
  • Hold the kick button down to charge the kick, sending them father
  • Hold [LeftShift] or gamepad [B] to summon blue slimes to your side

Notes

  • Additional content was used under license from artisticdude, Daniel Cook, Charles Gabriel, and Kevin MacLeod (for more information, see the LICENSE.txt file).
  • The game should be called ‘Explosive Slime Painter’ under the madlib construction rules, but we ran with the title right out of the madlib generator as it didn’t make a difference: the slimes are explosive and they end up exploding.

Planes on a Snake

This past weekend was the 4th annual Global Game Jam, and we hosted a site in the triangle again. I was an organizer this year, but I still had plenty of time to jam, creating Planes on a Snake with my team. The theme was a picture of an ouroboros, which we interpreted by setting a shmup on the back of the world serpent.

Brief Play Description

A rift in spacetime has resulted in a large number of World War II era planes getting stuck on the world snake.
Join the frequent fliers club of Ouroboros Airlines, racking up points while taking advantage of the torus nature of your new environment.

(video contains some strong language)

You have three weapons at your disposal:

  • Single shot – the default weapon
  • Spread shot – Three times the fun
  • The Lazër – A beam weapon that goes to 11

You progress thru the weapons as you collect powerups dropped by fallen enemies.

Once the meter is at least half full, you can activate the lazër, which fires until your reserves are depleted.

Scoring

  • Bullets will fly around and around forever, so watch out for crossfire from your own shots.
  • Earn more points by hitting adversaries with shots that have been flying for a long time.
  • Death is transient on the world snake, both you and your adversaries will eventually respawn.
  • Make as many points as you can during the time limit to earn your place in the frequent fliers club.

Jammers

  • Stephen Hodgson
  • Scott Jacobs
  • Luv Kohli
  • Michael Noland
  • Chris VanderKnyff
Additional graphics by
  • David Gervais

Original GGJ page.

Download

Download the game or source code.

Screenshots:

Hubert’s Safari Adventure

A game for one player using an Xbox controller or mouse and keyboard, wherein you exterminate dodos for a tyrannosaur named Hubert.

  • Hubert runs a park with the allegedly extinct dodo.
  • You have gotten a pass to go hunting on his lands.
  • Kill as many dodos as you can in the time limit.
  • Use ice cream to attract the dodos, and then crush them!
  • Drive them before you! Hear the lamentations of the hens!
  • Bonus time and money is awarded for high-efficiency extinction.
  • The game ends when time expires.

This is the game I worked on at the 3rd Global Game Jam, where the theme was Extinction. You can see more screenshots and download the game at the global game jam page.

Team:

  • Alexander C. Park
  • Autumn Ford
  • Chris VanderKnyff
  • Harrison Moore
  • Michael Kelley
  • Michael Noland
  • Nick Darnell

Possessed: The Turing Deception

This is the game that we made at the 2nd annual Global Game Jam (Jan 29..31, 2010).  The theme was Deception.

As a incorporeal assassin, you possess and control the bodies of innocents to further your mission of destroying rival assassins.  It’s a networked multiplayer action game, where you attempt to deceive the other players into thinking you are just one of the masses, while trying to spot others when they slip-up.

It can be downloaded from the Global Game Jam page for the game.  I tried to keep a running progress log over the course of the weekend, with periodic screen shots.

Our team consisted of:

  • Michael Noland
  • Nolan Walker
  • Nick Darnell
  • Scott Jacobs
  • Alex Park
  • Harrison Moore

Technology: We used C#, XNA 3.1, the Lidgren networking library, and a PHP script for matchmaking.