I made a game prototype, Frickin’ Laser Beams, this past weekend for Ludum Dare 21. It’s an isometric puzzle platformer where the goal is to avoid deadly laser beams. To do this you have to run towards energy shields that will protect you. Starting out I was inspired by the game Edge, which I recently got on my iPhone. It’s a beautiful game even though it has extremely simply graphics. I’m growing more fond of simplified art styles such as these, with Groove Coaster and 1bit Ninja being great inspiration as well. Messing around in unity I made a red wall, and that reminded me of a game idea I’ve had about a character that blends into his environment to protect himself from his enemies. The red wall became some laser beams, and I replaced the camouflage idea with energy shields.

I’m really happy with how this turned out, and I’m thinking of turning it into an iOS game. The biggest issue people seemed to have was with the controls. Because the levels are at a 45 degree angle, using the arrow keys is unintuitive. I have a couple of control ideas that I hope will be more intuitive on a touchscreen.

You can check out Frickin’ Laser Beams here:
http://www.uncade.com/prototypes/frickin-laser-beams

Art Bomb! and Art Bomb! XL for the iPhone and iPad just released on the App Store!.
It’s a drawing toy I made where you blow your drawings to generate new ideas. It is based of a prototype I made for the Experimental Gameplay project named ARTaSpLoDe! I changed the name to Art Bomb! because in retrospect, ARTaSpLoDe! is a terrible and confusing name. What I really wanted out of this app was to create a way to quickly brainstorm ideas with an non intrusive user interface. I was also really inspired by Alchemy, an open source drawing project, and wanted to create a similar but different way to imprecisely draw to inspire new ideas. I find its really useful for coming up with character silhouettes, which is something I have struggled grasping in the past, but am getting better at.

You can check out Art Bomb! in action here: Art Bomb! video on YouTube

iPhone version iTunes link

iPad version iTunes link