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SEEK*TOR is a puzzle game about revealing the single enemy turret on an obscured map. It was created for the 16th Ludum Dare competition, a 48-hour long solo game development challenge. The theme of the competition was “Explore.”

SEEK*TOR was ranked 5th overall of the 121 entries. Play it below:

Other links:

• Ludum Dare entry page
• Original competition entry (the version above contains some bugs I fixed after the end of the competition)

eFusjon RAD is a game promoting the eFusjon energy drink, launched in July 2009.

In RAD you control the Efusjonaut, and must absorb eFusjon to neutralize free radicals while avoiding toxins. The Efusjonaut is controlled with the mouse, and can switch between an offensive toxin-eliminating mode and a passive free radical-neutralizing mode.

I came up with the gameplay concept and led the project. A graphic designer came up with the look and feel for the menus and an animator/artist created the main game art and sprites. I incorporated everything into Flash, set up the overarching code structure, and programmed the gameplay and scoring. Other developers worked on the leaderboard score submission, some of the menus, and the instructions. After some testing showed that people were confused about how to play, I came up with and implemented the idea of adding pop-up tutorial messages in-game explaining things.

Links:

• eFusjon Gaming is the official game website, including details about the promotion
• eFusjon RAD is the page where you can play the game. Registration is required because the game is part of a contest.

I participated in the first Global Game Jam in February 2009, a challenge where the goal was to produce a playable game in 48 hours. The theme was “As long as we’re together, we’ll never run out of problems.

Let’s Shooting Love is a Geometry-Wars-style arena shooter about a lonely robot looking for a girlfriend. It was created in Multimedia Fusion, which we decided to use since one of the team members (Sebastian Jansiz) was an expert in it and promised even faster prototyping than Flash.

I was responsible for designing and implementing the enemy behaviors. I brainstormed a lot of potentially interesting behaviors and played other arena shooters for inspiration. Then I had to figure out how to implement them in Multimedia Fusion, which I had never used before the Game Jam.

I created both enemies and enemy generators, setting them up so that Sebastian could easily adjust parameters such as speed, hit points, and generation frequency. I made a wide variety of enemies, including ones that travel in V formation, ones that circle-strafe the player while firing shotgun bursts, and ones that break apart into smaller enemies when defeated.

Links:

• Gameplay Video
• Official Website
• Download

Snowfall is a game I originally thought of for a weekly game-making challenge at The Sims Carnival where the theme was “music”. After struggling with the limitations of the Sims Carnival game maker, I decided to take my idea and make it in Flash. I also used the opportunity to learn Actionscript 3.

Move the mouse to move the sun anywhere on screen. Avoid touching snowflakes. Click to release a burst of warmth that melts snowflakes and earns points, but uses up a life. Play the game with sound turned on!

This was a semester-long project course at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. The goal was to create a game that would teach elementary school children the basics of immunology, without resorting to military metaphors. (i.e., no “defending” against bacterial “attacks.”)

I functioned mainly as a programmer, implementing most of the user interface. I also composed music for the game and created and placed the sound effects.

Links:

• Project website
• Game download (58 MB ZIP) – requires a graphics card with a 3D accelerator. To play, unzip contents to a folder, and run Endo Patrol\game\runWorld.bat

Music:

These are the files used in the game, so they’re set up to loop.

• Chemical Gradient
• Hydrology
• Inflammation

The Don’t Forget the Lyrics Online Game was a project I worked on while at the Illusion Factory for Fox and RDF. Don’t Forget the Lyrics is game show where contestants are given the beginning of a song that cuts off suddenly; they are asked to fill in the missing lyrics.

The goal was to make an online version of the game show with new songs available every week. In addition, the game would allow players to upload videos of themselves performing the songs featured for that week. The video upload functionality was provided by Brightcove.

I was responsible for the overall structure of the code, as well as implementing the initial framework and several of the sections. This included the main game interaction of listening to the song and inputting the answer.

Play the game

The final assignment for my Visual Story class was to create a short, interactive love story. Our group decided to do a mystery with the question “Who sent the mysterious bouquet?” My teammates shot and edited video, took photos, and recorded audio, then handed them to me to integrate in Flash. Some of them also helped put together slideshows and interface elements

Play The Admirer’s Secret (Be patient–the SWF file is 7.5 MB, and there’s no pre-loader since it was meant to be played locally)

The structure of the piece is basically a choose-your-own-adventure. Players choose which of the five suspects to visit, and after visiting them all, the culprit is revealed. There are five endings.

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Astral Schism is a game I made as a group project for a class on gender in computer games.

The goal of the project was to design and create two variants of a game in order to test gender preferences. We decided to look at the violence/destruction vs. gathering/nurturing split. We created a space shooter with two modes. One mode is a typical space shooter. In the other mode, you gather ore and dodge asteroids.

I was responsible for the graphics, music, and final game balance.