January 2013 – KEVIN JAMES WONG

UNHEARTED

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Kevin Wong

So, yeah… my second Global Game Jam was friggin’ awesome.

I ended up going with my friends Catherine and Esteban to prepare a game within 48 hours that would be judged by Richard Lemarchand, IMD’s visiting professor and the designer of the Uncharted series. While we had a bit of a chaotic start trying to prototype across three different platforms, things settled down once we decided to use Processing.js, the only language we all had in common. After the theme was revealed to be the sound of a beating heart, we brainstormed and settled on a rhythmic art-game based loosely off Jason Roheher’s Passage. You would play as a girl who woke up one day without a heart and would explore the world in search of it, reminiscing about her life as she encounters the things she once loved. After a prototyping phase involving sticky-notes, we went on to rapidly prototype new iterations of game systems that we would try to use in the final game. It was great and we were going to make something as emotionally moving as Passage.

Except it didn’t end up like Passage, like, not at all.

About 24 hours in, we kinda lost our minds. It was a strange pseudo-cohenrence we all existed in for a while, and for a little, the slightest suggestion at some sort of pop-culture reference would evoke raucous laughter from all of us. Out of this, the game took the name Unhearted, and ended up with all sorts of random ridiculousness. Most of which came out of our “alternate ending”, where it turned out that the girl’s heart was with Lemarchand all along.

Catherine did all the game’s fantastic art, Esteban designed the game’s engine, and I did some additional programming and dealt with the game’s sound. From this experience, I learned a bit more about coding for interactivity, working effectively in a small team, the kind of ridiculousness that comes out of our friendship, and how to get used to this kind of lifestyle.

And just saying, UNHEARTED is now an award winning game. We won the “Pandering the the Judge” award, which is another way of saying that we know our target audience.

You can download and play UNHEARTED here.

The Global Game Jam

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Kevin Wong

Tomorrow starts one of my most anticipated weekends of the last few months: The Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game-making competition. In one chaotic and stressful weekend, impromptu game development teams come together to create small games with interesting gameplay concepts. Despite all the drama, shouting, and nerves that go on during these things, they’re one of the most important challenges that any student of game design can take up, and in a short amount of time, you can learn whole new toolsets and programming languages, discover something about yourself and how you work within a team, and bond quickly with an awesome group of creative people.

Admittedly, I am kinda nervous about tomorrow’s event and am still figuring out whether I’d want to use Unity or Game Maker, or work with a nondigital medium. I’ve done my work preparing for the stresses of tomorrow by working out, (trying) to get more sleep, and eating more vegetables, so hopefully, we’ll (whoever’s team I might end up on) make it to the finish line with something really cool to share on this site. Huzzah!