Post-Mortem: Misorderly [Vancouver Film School Student Project]

(For context, Misorderly can be played or downloaded through links in my portfolio.)

Introduction

It’s difficult to explain anything that went right with our project without first explaining everything that went wrong. So for this post-mortem, I’ll be examining the major obstacles we faced in creating the casual action runner that is Misorderly – and what it took to overcome them. I should mention that all points raised here relate to soft skills – design, project management – so if you’re looking for a technical post-mortem, this isn’t it.

INTERVIEW: Eric Ford, Designer & Programmer of ‘Social Justice Warriors’

In Social Justice Warriors (SJW), the player takes on the role of an internet crusader, fighting trolls wielding popular fallacies such as “Argument from Self-Knowledge”, “Ad Hominem Attack” and “Argument from Incredulity”. Taking inspiration from traditional role-playing games, SJW features four player-classes: Paladin, Cleric, Mage and Rogue.

Interview: Anna Prein, Pi Jam Organizer and Time-Travelling Unicorn

With Pi Jam coming up this Friday, I sat down with organizer Anna Prein, a fellow 2013 Women in Games Scholarship recipient and current Vancouver Film School student to find out more about the jam, as well as the history of Hat Jam.

FEMINISM IN THE GAMES INDUSTRY: THE IMPORTANCE OF ASKING ‘WHY?’

*Disclaimer: This article may contain more questions than answers.*

Contents:

Prologue & Introduction

Interview: Brenda Bailey Gerschkovitch (Silicon Sisters, CEO)

Interview: Kirsten Forbes (Silicon Sisters, COO)

Interview: Mathew Kumar (MK Ultra, CEO and Creative Director)

Conclusion

Illustration by: Nicholas Gilbert

GAMEPOST: LUDUM DARE #28 – MAMA IS SICK [Post-Mortem]

Note: Ludum Dare is a quarterly game jam where participants from all over the world make a game from start to finish in 48 hours (competition mode) or 72 hours (jam mode). Guerric and I did the jam. The theme was ‘You Only Get One’. Entries are judged based on: innovation, fun, theme, graphics, audio, humor, mood and overall. Participants play and rate each others games. Results will be announced on January 5th, 2014.

‘Mama is Sick’ can be played here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-28/?action=preview&uid=30729

My first Ludum Dare! And my second game jam ever.

This post will cover what mine and @GarrickWinter (Guerric Haché)’s game is about, a summary of the process we went about making it and the top 3 things done well and the top 3 things we could improve on.

Quick description of our game (taken from the instructions screen):

“Mama is Sick” is a resource-management, hard-times simulation game.

YOU ONLY GET ONE DOLLAR A DAY to look after your family (thanks to a generous family from overseas) while papa is away and mama is sick.

Buy food and water to make sure the food, water and health bars of you and your family don’t reach zero or death will occur.

If your education bar reaches zero, you won’t graduate high school.

You have to last 50 days until papa comes back. Will you manage to graduate? Will everyone survive?

You can work in a clothing factory to earn 50c a day, but be careful not to miss too much school. You also need to study at least three days a week or risk not being able to graduate.

GamePost: Hat Jam 3, Halloween Game Jam – The Temptation of Antonio the Vampire [Post-Mortem]

Hat Jam is a game jam that runs at VFS (Vancouver Film School) once a term and is organized by fellow students Anna Prein and Michelangelo Pereira Huezo.

Teams of 3 had less than 48 hours to design and make a game from scratch, based on a painting that was randomly given to them.

You can read Anna’s write up of the jam on the VFS arcade and play games made by other teams here: http://community.vfs.com/arcade/2013/11/hat-jam-3-thirteen-games/#more-8907

I entered with two of my classmates, Danilo Reyes and Guerric Haché, winning best story.

Picture taken from here: Danilo, myself and Guerric, with a screenshot of our game.

This post is about the process behind the game we made, ‘The Temptation of Antonio the Vampire‘, which can be played by clicking on the name or following this link: http://projects.myvfs.com/games/HatJam3/SanAntonio/SanAntonio.html