Cubic Ninja

I picked up Cubic Ninja from Amazon.com recently. $10. I had a $20 promotional credit in my account due to my past purchase of Ocarina of Time and the game itself was on sale for $30 instead of the normal 3DS game price-point of $40. I figured “What the heck, it can’t be that bad for $10” and I remember hearing it was one of the more unique showings of the 3DS some time ago.

How does it fair for $10? Not that great. Let me explain. Continue reading →

Drop Herder

“Drop Herder” was designed in mid-late May of 2011 for a 3rd party. Their requirements were to make a game for kids teaching them about diabetes treatments. The toughest part about designing this game – I think – was the age range. They wanted kids ages 4 to 10 playing this game.

Think about that for just a moment: age 4 to age 10. That is QUITE the range. Going from not knowing how to read to wanting to play “cool” T-rated/”tween” games. I think I managed fairly well considering.

The game design is simple: you move a drop of insulin from one point to another in the human body. Once that point is reached, the player is taught something about diabetes.

I think the only thing that I wasn’t happy about after I finished this was that I forgot the explain the secondary purpose of the parent taking a picture of the child’s head. Besides being used in-game to describe to the player the concept of “you,” (remember, ages 4-10 here) and as a profile picture it would serve as a nice transition scene into their body. Imagine taking a picture of your head and then slowly zooming in on it until you’re inside your body. That seems like it would be fun/cool to me if I was 4 or so.

Download: Drop Herder GDD

A Duo of Designs

Here are two more design documents I cooked up in the middle and end of January 2011 respectively: “Junkyard Dogs” and “Mario Kart – Wudang Mountains.” Both were designs made to fulfill requirements by 3rd parties. “Junkyard Dogs” is a 2-4 player design set in a junkyard where players have to construct and control a rail gun and harm their opposing team members with it. Think of it as “UT2K4 mixed with Minecraft.” Man, I loved me some UT2K4….

Download: Junkyard Dogs GDD

“Mart Kart – Wudang Mountains” is just as it sounds: a Mario Kart racetrack set in the Wudang Mountains of China. It was my first time designing a racetrack. I think my only complaints with this design are:

  • I didn’t pick a Nintendo character to theme this track with. (e.g., DK Summit as in Mario Kart Wii) I do have some ideas listed down at the bottom at the document, but I didn’t pick one and left it open to discussion.
  • The track design is too simple. I thought the track design would be tough enough due to the obstacles I put in the way.

Download: Mario Kart – Wudang Mountains GDD

The Rise & Fall of the Lunch King

Back in December of 2010 I was asked to work on “Lunch King,” a collaboration between Mr. John Harding and myself which focused on teaching chess to kids. Due to other obligations, the project could not continue. Before sunsetting the project, John allowed me to release the assets I had made to the public. John and I used Google Docs to work on the design document so you’ll notice some odd formatting. I am most likely going to upload the rest of the assets later, but I’ll upload the design document for now.

Download: Lunch King GDD