Post Mortem

And we’re done! Well technically we we’re done several months ago, but it’s nice to revisit this project at its end. I’m overall happy with my contribution to Aetherial as a coder. As a game designer however I have some reservations.
The code works, there are no major bugs and there is a clear and working way from the start to the end. The game is full of devices and artifacts I am quite proud of, such as the updated transition […]

Playtesting

At both playtests we put up two computers playing the game, each accompanied by an extra computer with a google survey on it and an observer from the group taking notes on what and how the player was doing. Anna(game design) had written a quite extensive observation sheet listing all the things to look out for in the player. Somehow though we all just started writing down our thoughts, observations and informal interviews with players on the back of the […]

Playtesting: a fresh pair of eyes

Context
Unfortunately, our group did not benefit too much from play test. We were late on development for the first one(but did have a bare bone prototype to show), and a large bug prevented us from showing anything worthwhile during the second one. But, we did have some people try it during the beta once the game was stable.
Motion sickness
In our initial prototype, the player was always pointing up on the screen, and rotation would result in the camera rotating to […]

Postmortem

This project has been fun, but hard! We managed to make a functioning “shoot ‘em up” game. It is not the best game ever, and probably not the best version of Umibozu, but I am proud of what we have done. The art does not look that bad at all and it is indeed playable.
The whole process of choosing a design document, doing the pre-production, actually producing the game and to present the finished product has been a hell of […]

Playtesting

This blogpost is about the playtesting and how it affected our development. We had three playtesting sessions during this course. The playtests were very useful, and it was so good that we had the opportunity to test other games and to have our game tested. We got some really good feedback from our fellow students, and it was nice to see what the other teams were doing and how they solved some of their problems. It was also really interesting […]

this is about me

this is about me.
 
i was raised
in a pyramid of power,
in a circle of hatred and violence.
driven by ego,
fuelled by fear.
 
i was raised
homophobic, transphobic, sexist,
racist, carnist, elitist, capitalist,
etc.

all these absolutisms
governed the development of my brain.
formed my cognitive and moral foundation,
my thought patterns,
my language.
 
all these absolutisms,
in their own unique ways,
eventually led to loneliness.
 
but i realized,
i am not alone.
this circle of hatred and violence,
surrounds many
from an early, malleable age.
 
it’s really hard to break out of it,
and really easy to stay stuck.
as it inherently […]

Jungle Jive

As part of the “Arcade Game” course at Uppsala University, me and my team, Dyonisos Games, made Jungle Jive. The purpose of the course was to create a game using a special input method of our choice. After a bit of iteration, we chose to create a dancing game in which two players would use dolls to control their avatar on screen, instead of dancing themselves.
Here’s the trailer for the game :

We had about ten weeks to create the game, […]

Morning time has gold in the mouth as we say in Swedish

Good morning!
Today I will try to get some work done as well as some of the summer course I’m taking. I also got some help with my own little project yesterday so I am finally getting somewhere with that as well.
My project
Placeholder 3D for the game
So let me tell you a bit about my personal project that I am working on! I am so excited, both because of the fact that I am learning so much as well as I […]

Code

2018
Wow, a lot of things have happened since I last wrote here but I figured that I might as well keep on writing. Writing is always a good thing to keep up. So, what’s new is that I am no longer working with Penny’s farm. I started to learn how to program with C# and, to work on my own project while I have an extra job on the side to retain some income during the summer. I may also […]

The talks are online!

The presentations are now available on our YouTube-channel. Even better – if you prefer reading you can click through these links to find a) a description and the video for each talk and b) our live Twitter coverage of each talk. Highly recommended!

Welcome! by the Department of Game Design
Making Them Care: The Narrative Burden for Creating Empathy, by Heidi McDonald
Existential Game Design – Lost in the Woods, Searching for Bliss, by Doris […]

ego vs. eco

ego is poison.
family is antidote.
if we all are a healthy family, certain members can be weak sometimes, without a problem.
cherish others FOR their weaknesses AND their strengths.
show your vulnerability.
when you feel like crying, cry.
don’t let it stew, don’t let it turn into violence.
show that you can’t always be strong.
and when you are, it is for them.
even if it is for you, it is for them.
because we are integral parts of each other’s lives and therefor each other!
try to show your […]

Photos from GGC 2018

To avoid completely swamping this post, we’re putting only a few photos here and sharing the full set on Facebook. There’s also a lot of activity on the Instagram tag – #GGConf2018.
Recordings of all the talks are available on our YouTube-channel.
Show Floor:

You can browse all the student projects right here on the GAME Department blog. We keep a specific tag for the awarded games too.