I was interviewed for a blog on the teaching resources portal Twinkl. Anyone who know me knows I’m always happy to talk about programming and games. This time I’m wearing both my gamedev hat and my university lecturer hat.

[ Twinkl Blog ]

Here’s some footage from an endless driving/shooting game I have been working on, for iOS/Android.

There will be 3 game modes:
(1) endless driving (how far and fast can you get without crashing),
(2) endless driving with guns (and armed enemies),
(3) story mode – you’re trying to catch spies in supercars while being attacked by armed cops – complete with end of level bosses in armed trucks, and radio-style narration by Robert ‘Task’ Smith.

Just today I caught up with Task and got him on board. I think the voiceover will be a really cool feature of the game: it will warn you of approaching enemies, let you know when you’re catching up with (or losing) the end-of-level boss that is your main target to complete each level. Task was one of the two voice talents in Darkwind, providing really slick and stylish TV-commentary-style comments during deathraces and arena combats.

Tarantino-style music by Pierre Langer of Shockwavesound.

Doodle Bomber is a little game I made with graphics by my 10 yr old son, Andrew. It’s based on the old game Blitz that I used to play on the Apple II, where your plane flies across the landscape dropping bombs and levelling buildings.

I’m very pleased with the visual style (kudos to Andrew!) and especially like the little stickmen. As usual I have focused on sound effects and once again the endless bounty that is freesound.org turned up some rather brilliant yells and screams which the little guys emit as you blow them 40 feet in the air
I did a little pitch shifting on them, which turns it from “slightly disconcerting bloodcurdling yell” to “comedy effect yell”.

The stickmen run towards the nearest building, and build it from the ground up to 4 floors. At this point a gun appears on the top and starts shooting at you. Tanks also appear if you’re taking too long on a level.

Here’s a quick look at the Doodle Bomber game’s use of 2D sprites in a 3D world; it’s a nice way to get parallax effects. In actual gameplay, the camera scrolls along beside the airplane, and as the various pieces of scenery disappear off the left of the screen they are transported forwards to the right, to give the impression on an endless (looping) game world:

OK, it’s not very original. But it’s a bit of fun.

I wanted to do a small collaborative project with an artist friend of mine (Liam Krewer) and I also felt that the sound effects in Let’s Break Stuff! were just too good to not be used one more time.

So yeah, it’s a ninja swiping game, along the lines of a few thousand other games you might have seen before. There’s a nice combo/power-up system to give it a bit of a twist. And of course the sound effects destroy the opposition with their awesomeness! The theme tune by Art Munson of Shockwave Sound is really nice also