Atomic Garden Interactive

Don't Nouveau and drive, kids. I created influence maps for Art Nouveau and Megalithic Architecture to show the hierarchy of influence different pieces in their respective genres have on the work I create. I'm going to create one for the When the Sleeper Wakes project to show the different places that 

SO YOU GOTTA BOAST ABOUT IT! Getting the player to learn how to play your game is one of those challenges that every game designer faces. I decided to attempt to use the subtle method of giving the player no choice but to do the action and implying through affordance and context what to do without telling them what to do. For example at the beginning of the game the player spawns on the left against a wall. It follows then that they must move right. The player then falls into a pit. They must use the jump key to escape, then into another pit, same deal as the first except now they cant directly jump out as they have a jump off of the raised block because the wall is 3 blocks high. This teaches the player their limits without simply telling them. The pits are also just too long to jump over so a player cant accidentally miss this lesson. Next, the player enters a room where the ceiling slopes down nearly to the floor heavily implying crouching and affording them a small space to move th...

A man was eaten by a verb. That's what happened. Verb ate'im. When coming up with ideas for my game I tried to think of all the actions a player could take as different verbs. I would then construct sentences using those verbs to represent the puzzles of each stage. For example: The player first Climbs  up the platform, then Pushes the box onto the spikes. The player then Falls from the platform onto the box then Jumps to the Checkpoint. This clearly shows the different actions the player will take in the puzzle and allows me to see what each puzzle idea is actually asking the player to do and how much in between checkpoints. if the sentences get too long then I know I need to break them up with a checkpoint. or if they get too repetitive I know I will need to vary up or rearrange the challenges.  List of verbs in my game Jump Run Crouch Push Reset Dodge Climb Fall To be clear each verb doesn't necessarily correspond to a specific mechanic. The feeling a player gets wh...

The Spirit level isn't as fun as it sounds The way I designed the levels was I drew out my idea using the Tilemap and one tile. Then I added in any special features such as boxes and hazards using different colour tiles as place holders. This created the basic shape of the level and allowed me to tweak it quickly as well as have the character dropped into it to test things such as can the player make this jump. All without having to worry about aesthetics yet. I got this idea from grey boxing, used mostly in 3D games it blocks out the physical features of your level or map to allow you to see more clearly the spaces that you are developing. Then once I had made any revision I would go through and paint over with the correct tiles test the level again and finally replace the place holders with the real objects such as boxes and spike blocks. Finally adding backgrounds.