This game is my submission for this month’s Experimental Gameplay Project competition. The theme is slicing.

I stuck with ActionScript, but this time I used an engine, FlashPunk! I must give credit to the amazing FlashDevelop again.

I’ve got to warn you that this is very unexperimental and goes against the values of the experimental gameplay project. I knew this going in when I chose the idea. I had a conflict. How does a new game developer develop expiremental game mechanics without having the experience of creating any games? I had more complex ideas, but I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to create it, afraid of losing motivation to overcome the hurdles during development. Instead I decided to choose a simple idea, so that I could create an entire game, polished, with my own art and sounds. To know what it takes to create a game. It’s a stepping stone for my game development career. Polishing is essential to developing games too. What good is an expiremental game if you never create a final product out of it? It’s just a prototype, an idea. My game doesn’t belong on Experimental Gameplay Project, but EGP did inspire and motivate me to create a game. So I feel that it’s a failure to EGP, but a personal success.

Welp, that’s my excuse. Now that I feel more confident to take on more challenging prototypes, I swear my next project will be more experimental.

The game should appear below this line. It’s 11mb in size. Yep, it’s a cheesy runner/fruit ninja hybrid.

EDIT: I updated the voice-over for the knight enemy, as someone commented in EGP that they had trouble figuring out how to kill them.

EDIT2: …And the results are in!

The following does not have to be read by EGP. I’m just cramming in a personal blog post with the game.

I started out thinking about slicing idea and writing some out in my composition book. I had a few oh-so-cliche-for-indie puzzle platformers. One about folding, with three different mechanic ideas. I googled around to see if they were done already. Faultline used one and in my opinion turned out to be a fantastic game. Paper Cakes used one, and was a student showcase at IGF 2010. The third one was about folding platforms. I also had two more mechanics that dealt with cutting an entire platform game into a rooms, then moving those around. I didn’t find any game that has done either of them yet.

As I said, I’m a new developer and was afraid of being unable to output anything useful in the limited time, so I chose a runner fruit ninja style slicing game. I even had some neat ideas for that game: like using Box2d to actually cut through the enemies or cutting the stage to leave voids (which is required to solve some problem) or using gestures to cut in various ways.

None of this happened. I was only able to implement the fruit ninja slicing mechanic with normal collision. The rest of the time went into polishing, level design, art, sounds, voiceovers, etc. I learned that the core of a game (the main idea and core mechanics) is made within the first few days, the other 90% is polish. That’s rough. Are all other arts this brutal? The core mechanics of Braid was made in two weeks and it took an additional three years to reach the final version. I think so.

Now I’m going to share some personal thoughts I had during the creation of the game. It’s sort of a continuation of my thoughts about transitioning into an artist. I think it’s interesting to hear this transition from the voice of a 24 year old.

10/12
How do you begin with art? Choose a project too small, knowing it’s going to be insignificant, you can lose motivation. Choose a project too large, and can lose motivation to finish it.

10/14
After making two games, I realize anything really is possible if you have the motivation to do it. I’ve been choosing simple projects, but it seems and is logical that the best project to choose would be the one I want to do the most, no matter the difficulty. So, from now on, no more choosing the easy route.

10/15
Although I would enjoy learning/doing martial arts, cooking, breakdancing, and other cool somewhat useful skills that are more accessible to learn in a city, I think I’ll always prioritize work/art over it. Creating video games and film wins my time.

You should be able to translate whatever is on your mind in the medium you are most comfortable with. That’s art. Maybe you’re currently into capitalism, then make something about it to express your feelings about capitalism. Maybe you just love the feeling of cooking, make something acorrding to that! (…Now if only I had the technical skill to express my thoughts onto a medium…)

10/16
[should be under self-improvement] Wake up early, there’s no need to be up late, never oversleep, never waste time, be optimistic, be more social

Then again, choosing an ambitious project first is not a good idea either. It would take a much longer time to create an ambitious project first, then to create it later, after a few small projects.

10/19
Should I be working on my own, doing personal art projects, or should I be doing something a little bit more social, like internships? To me an internship, for profit or for art, still counts as working for someone else. It’s not nearly as satisfying as working independently. I also feel that I learn a lot more working alone. I experience the entire creative and work processes, whereas for an internship, my creativity would likely be limited or unused completely! I just have to make sure I go through with larger projects, projects that would trump anything I would have accomplished at an internship.

I don’t feel that I’m doing that bad. I’m competing against kids from elite colleges and people with a passion. Then again, I know I’m not doing great.