Whew, that was a period of fun and stress. Long story short, I’ve finished my first game Tunnel Fission, a one-button game for two players. We submitted this to Kokoromi’s GAMMA IV competition with a sliver of hope. However, this game did not get selected for the showcase at GDC 2010, but we’re glad to have gone up against 153 other entries.
Anyway, here’s the link to the game:
http://www.andrewdang.com/tunnelfission/.
Here’s the long story:
Tunnel Fission started when I received information about Kokoromi’s upcoming GAMMA IV competition and is the result of a collaboration between myself and Zachary Boehm. I’d received word about the competition about the time finals were rolling around, and I thought I’d shoot the programmer an e-mail to see if he was interested.
I’d been invited to TCF’s FroshCon (a great experience in itself), and met Zach there. Here we were at a weekend retreat, and he was jotting down notes for his next game project. Dedication at its finest.
Anyway, this hopefully will become a milestone that I can look back upon and say, that’s where I started. What disappoint me are the General Education classes that eat away at so much of the time that I am given each week. While they do give me a bit of perspective on matters aside of video games, I’d like to avoid unnecessary busywork and focus my efforts onto a project that will give me experience points in my chosen field.
I am grateful then that I had such a great partner who would dedicate his valuable time to building video games, and motivate me to do the same despite the discouraging tide of schoolwork that pushed up against us. Luckily the first month of the second semester wasn’t too bad.
How Tunnel Fission Came To Be
I few years ago I played Nanaca Crash, I fell in love with it. It is one of those short, addicting, and really fun games. Nanaca Crash uses simple user input, a single mouse-click, and places the player on an endless track, giving them the opportunity to string together cute combos through a single button. I showed it to a friend of mine, a younger brother of a friend of mine, my younger sisters, and it was an accessible game that didn’t have to make complete sense, had a short play time and presented a simple narrative.
I wanted test the limits of single button interaction, but didn’t do so until GAMMA IV arrived. Zach threw me the idea of magnets. Deep and related on multiple levels. One button gives you two states: on and off. I liked the idea of building from the physics of polarity.
While website building I stumbled on Anthony Mattox‘s homepage. I wouldn’t be able to match his beautiful yet very technical design. He has a whole portfolio of Processing works up there, if you’d like to check it out. Naturally, he’s dabbing into the field of games. I played his first and only game so far: Pulsus, and really enjoyed his seamless unification of simplicity and complexity into one system. I saw potential in the game to be used as a hands on learning tool to familiarize oneself with electromagnetic forces.
to be continued…