Ludography: Game Jams

Metro Mori is a first-person narrative game about negotiating the afterlife, which turns out to be a multi-lingual metro system. Meet other wanderers on their own quests for understanding, happy endings or intervention, and see what conclusions might also await you.

Developed during Train Jam 2017 (theme: ‘unexpected anticipation’) with:

  • Ahmed Elgoni (programming),
  • Innes McKendrick (programming & technical art),
  • Isaac Karth (3D & technical art),
  • Giulia Yamazaki (2D art),
  • Izzy Gramp (art),
  • Elie Abraham (theme music) and
  • Bradford Dobbs (soundscapes).


My contributions: game concept (with Innes), narrative design & scripting, level design & transit map, accessibility oversight
Tools: Twine (& Yarn), Unity 3D, Google Sheets, Adobe Illustrator
Platforms: PC

Play

Team “Metro Mori” at Train Jam 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7cLD1J7rUA

Related Projects

Waybinder

Metrowitch

Ardo

A Planet Wakes

Ardo

Ardo is an adventure game which explores anxiety and culture shock from moving to a foreign land. You play as the new arrival in a village where the residents dress differently to you, and speak an unfamiliar language made up of glyphs. You must take in the surroundings, be bold, and try to learn their ways whilst they might one day, in turn, come to learn yours.

We developed and presented a short proof-of-concept demo during Splash Jam in 2016. The team included myself, Skully Brookes (programming), Rikke Jansen (art), Bendik Høydahl (SFX & VFX) and Almut Schwache (music). The game is played using a Playstation 4 controller, whose icons form the basics of Ardo‘s 12-character language.

My contributions: game concept, language & scenario design, UI assets

Dev tools: Google Sheets, Adobe Photoshop

Platforms: PC, Mac (requires a game controller)

Gameplay

The above video demonstrates first an ‘ideal’ play, then one more in line with a typical player’s response. The first encounter teaches a typical greeting (“fuh-shuh”), and exchange of names. The next scene is a dialogue in which the player is expected to exchange pleasantries, then order bread (“pah-pah”).

On-rails: Train Jam 2017

Last month and for the first time, I was honoured to be able to attend Train Jam: the annual, trans-American game jam event which now drops an entire train-load of developers in San Francisco, just in time for GDC. I did so courtesy of the event’s diversity initiative, for which I am extremely grateful. As anyone who knows me personally (and a few who don’t) will have noticed: trains and game jams are kind of my thing.

My usual custom for game jam wrap-ups like this is to go in-depth on some of the lessons learned, explain a bit about the game we made, and try to keep aspects of the journey or the setting either in their own post, or confined within my Flickr gallery. With Train Jam more than most jams though, I feel as though the journey contributed too much to the process to be taken in isolation. So, now that I’ve finally been able to sift through my photographs from this long weekend in the United States, it’s time for a ‘read more’ jump:

Read More »On-rails: Train Jam 2017

A Planet Wakes is a narrative-driven strategy game which was inspired by golden era science fiction. You have been brought in to help a failing team of terraformers bring their project back on schedule, but the barren world they’re working on holds strange and distracting secrets…

Developed by ‘Wonder Games’ – myself, Delia Hamwood, Barry Hemans and Liz Edwards – as part of Antholojam in December 2014.

“… a neat little gem that’s begging to go from prototype to polished game.”

Paste Magazine, 2015-03-12

My contributions: game & level design, narrative & scripts, graphic design, testing
Tools: Unity 3D, Adobe Photoshop, Google Sheets
Platforms: browser

A Planet Wakes
Play†

† Developed for Unity Web Player, which is now supported only by legacy browsers

Related Projects

Extropia

Dragon Queens

Waybinder

Metrowitch