G A M E S T O R M

Brainstorming some ideas for mechanics and puzzles.

Submitted by Ben Swinden.

This is the last post from my game design blog which I’m wrapping up after 500 ideas because my brain has melted. It’s a totally immersive online man-servant game featuring no-holds barred butler-on-butler action. I think the industry is ready for this now…

Submitted by king baggot.

“Design of a resource gathering RTS-ish thing I’ve been thinking about.”

Submitted by Ben657.

Concept for the strange mutant played in What the Flush, a game made during a Jam.

Submitted by Matthieu “Sha” Sablier.

Usually I edit the posts down to just the best part of the submission, but this wall of text was so personal and awesome that I have to just post it as it arrived:

The First Video Game that I have Designed, Sketched!

What you see above is a sketch I draw back when I was about 4-5 years old. And it is actually a video game! All started when a cousin of mine gave me his Sega Master System II. Back then I wad delighted and so passionate about playing video games. It was like breath in - breath out to me. I could not stop thinking about it. I could not stop talking about it. It was the only video game console I had and I was loving it. Bundled with that console was the video game Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Countless and countless are the hours that I had spent playing this game, me and/with my family. It was indeed a miracle to me. Video games are always kindle my imagination and, this were not an exception, instead it was the beginning, what started all. Surely, it was not the first video game that I have played in my life, the first I think was Sneak n’ Peek on Atari 2600. But the previous mentioned game was not mine, but Alex Kidd was and so I could play it any time. Now, I have to mention another game that was so important as Alex Kidd and that was Sonic the Hedgehog. A friend of mine borrow that game to me for some time. Both of these games were the sparkle that kindle on me the fire of my desire to one day become a video game designer. Epilogically, what you see above is the product of the beginning of that desire. That sketch is heavily influenced and based on these two games: Alex Kidd and Sonic. I remember pausing from playing Sonic so I can adapt the design of this game (especially the design of the Factory Levels / Scrap Brain Zone) up to my sketch and also trying my best to copy all the detail. Not surprisingly, the design of my sketch it has one element that comes from Super Mario Bros. and that is the 3D transparent box as you can see. Years and years I was dreaming one day to design my own game. I remember I was day-dreaming (and maybe and night-dreaming) video games of my fantasy, with plot, levels, characters, animations et cetera. When I were telling people (especially kids of my age) that this is my dream and this is what I want to be when I will grow up, they were laughing at me, because they thought that is something that only “high-level” people can do, because it is so hard. It is hard. But today, thanks to all the tools we got in our hands, that is something plausible. Maybe you will not make something that will be in all major consoles and on the markets, but now there is an independent community out there that you can share your creations (even selling them), and thus you can be an independent video game developer and, by that way, fulfil your dream!

Submitted by Giorgio Sotiro.

This is just one page of an entire notebook I doodled back in 1988 or 1989 when I was 9 or 10. Hopefully I’ll get motivated enough to scan more notebooks, there are plenty of them.

Submitted by spram.

“These are the first sketched I did to figure out what my main character is going to look like for my Flash game.”

Submitted by lumpybutt33.

“Sketches for a game I was working on with Richard Garfield that will probably never see the light of day … since it was such a simple game, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to make our own engine more-or-less from scratch, and never made a level editor. So we had to input the coordinates for the level’s physical geometry manually. That one on the right is what we went with. In hindsight, should have used Unity, but then I wouldn’t have these cute sketches!”

Submitted by (Jamie Fristrom)[http://happionlabs.com], Bellevue, WA

“The first sketches we did for the game we are currently working on.”

Submitted by Block Brains.

“Here’s a selection of pages from one of my game design moleskines. I usually add to it when I need a break from schoolwork or before I go to bed, and I try not to erase anything so I can see how my ideas have evolved. I’ve also started coloring the sketches when I can’t think of anything to add, which makes it more fun to leaf through. I use a fairly limited set of colored pencils for highlighting lecture notes, so there’s also the added challenge of trying to mix the colors I need.

I have six projects in this book, most of which are old projects I work on a little every now and then. These sketches are from three different projects. One is a platformer, the second is an action RPG and the third is fantasy/horror interactive fiction. Coincidentally, they share the same themes, namely death, resurrection and the afterlife.”

Submitted by Retinal Eclipse in Norway.

“So this was for a main character for a 2d action platformer. Mid way into 40 iterations of character designs, I things got a little wacky. It eventually became a yeti. Obviously.”

Submitted by Mark Rito in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

“These are some sketches of enemies for Taco Graveyard’s PENUMBEAR, which should be out early next year.”

Submitted by Steve Emond.

“My D&D World, actual physical map I handed my players, Hand drawn, colored, stained with tea bags, dried, charred and seared, rolled up and tied with twine.

I enjoy giving my players physical objects to hold when we play D&D, it helps them stay in character and immerse them in my world.”

Submitted by gamedesigngeek.

“They’re each game characters or embodiments of mechanics in search of a game; trying a different angle for inspiration!”

Via Andy Moore in Victoria, BC, Canada.

“This is something I worked on this weekend, specifically ‘Crew Deck 14 F’.”

From Chris Bischoff’s developer log for STASIS.