Æryxz

I’ve been meaning to write this all week but haven’t had a chance to.

Last weekend I participated in the app olympics, where you have 48 hours with a random team to make an app based on a random pitch. There were simultaneous participants from around the world including NYC, Paris, London.

The idea that I chose was the premise of having an ipad educational game teaching young kids (2-5yo) on brushing their teeth, and cutely named Toothbrushy.

My team consisted of the Idea generator (Michael), Artist (Dana), iOS developer (Chris) and myself (Designer). I think the results was a very polished looking game, especially done in 48 hours.

Toothbrushy was judged and won second place for best app in the Berlin scene. We are quite proud of it, and Michael will continue working on the app and hopefully it will find success on the app store.

Since there was a shortage of designers, I also helped in Unlock Your Brain (#1, won Berlin bemyapp), betataste.me (#5) and Magic. It was a great experience to meet people from the berlin start up scene with various skills and ideas, and just be involved in creating something.

Bemyapp: http://bemyapp.de/

Article: http://siliconallee.com/events/2012/02/27/berlin-unlocks-its-brain-at-bemyapp-olympics

Toothbrushy: http://toothbrushy.com/

Things are going good.

Last night I did a mad adventure trip to Ikea with a French workmate. We were dicussing languages (and my lack of comprehension outside of English), particularly the sounds of languages.

I’ve put together a playlist of the same song which have been transcribed over different languages. It’s a romantic song, “a whole new world” in English from the movie Aladdin.

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Aladdin/62698253

Enjoy. Which is your favourite?

I also found out that Finland got the Swedish version (which is strange since Finnish and Swedish do come from the same roots).

I think this is one of the rare times where the French have won.

Bastion. The final hope. It is where you will find your home for a few hours, a place for your memories, your arms and your stomach. Bastion, at its core is a simple RPG game. You have two weapons. You have one special attack. You can block, or evasive roll. Through its simplicity, comes complexity. The blocking mechanism has multiple function, a well-timed block becomes a counter attack, but it can also serve as an aiming tool for your ranged weapons. Some melee weapons can be thrown, depending if they are charged up by holding down attack. The bastion offers multiple upgrades for your multiple weapons, increasing their utility. Some can add explosive effects or knockback, or just outright increase your damage. But you must choose the upgrades for your play style. There’s also hero upgrades in the form of beverages, they can add more damage or resist damage, or allow you to carry more. And there’s also a way to increase game difficulty which increases the rewards in both XP and money. A mixture of all these elements allows you to try new things, and new styles, or just excel in how you want to play it. There’s proving grounds that  reward you in prizes for completing them in record timing. There’s also arenas, a form of survival mode, for those just wanting to have a hit around. In a way, the design of the game, whilst simple, has a multi-faceted gems to customise the game. And this game is certainly a gem, the major one being the narrative.

The narrative seems dynamic and great device for storytelling. Every action is told in story form, and it compels you to play on. It merges the lines between online entertainment and storytelling further, if only there was a PDF at the end of the game. The level seems to be dynamically created to, as the level builds around you as you walk around (they’re not), but it adds to the story telling. It would be great if the levels are generated through random seeds, a different game each time you play. Whilst the narrative is a strong point, the storyline is not, but that’s okay, it’s only a sub-20 dollar indie game and it was a lot of fun.

Worth checking out.