MIRROR'S EDGE

A friend showed me this trailer just after the games announcement at GDC 2008. I’ve been repeatedly watching it ever since and every single time I find myself in a hypnotic state... staring at my monitor… thinking to myself… WOW, that game looks awsome! It really goes to show how much depth / immersion you can create with GOOD design (not to mention the stunning visuals, HD versions can be viewed HERE, it really is worth it).

Below is a break down of the same trailer, it explains the games mechanics and tells us a little more about the beautiful world that DICE have created for this game. So looking forward to this title, compelling stuff!

CHARACTER DESIGN RIP OFF!

Am I going a little mad here, or is Disney Pixar's new animation cash cow WALL.E a complete character design RIP OFF of John Badham’s 1986 classic, Short Circuit (aka - Johnny 5) ?! Oh wait, there is a change... they’ve added a box for the body... tut!

RESULTS + RECYCLE WEB GAME CONCEPT

First things first, the results are in for the 2^nd year and I got a god dam 1^st…
Obviously I’m extremely happy with that result and I think a 1^st honestly reflects the effort and passion I put into my submitted work... GO ME!

__________________________

Moving on... and after pondering the different possibilities for my up coming client project I decided to do a rough concept design for one of my potential clients, Nottingham City Council. NCC has a new recycling initiative coming up, but one of their major issues is that the (idiotic) public don’t understand what recyclable waste goes into what colour bags… so I’ve come up with a very simple Flash game that would educate players on that very subject.

As you can see from the game screen design below, the player has to click and drag the correct waste (which will constantly be falling, ala Tetris) into the correct coloured bins. There are the standard game mechanics of the player versus the clock, and also the speed increases as the player progresses through the levels. If the player is too slow the fallen waste builds up till the screen is full, then it’s game over.

This design is very basic I know, it clearly needs a lot more development… but I just wanted to get the idea out of my system and publish it up here.
If this was my official client project for the 3^rd year I’d defiantly produce a game that didn’t follow such standard games concepts... I’d certainly want to make a game that operated ‘out side of the box’.

QUICK SUMMER UPDATE

I’m slogging it out at the moment, big time, working a run of the mill summer job, grabbing as many hours as I can get my hands on… money, money, money, the bills have got to be paid, sucks.

I’m still finding time to read the array of game design books that I checked out of the library before the holidays, they don’t have to be back till October, score!

In other news I’m drastically re-thinking my Client and Research projects for next semester after having a very insightful conversation with one of my tutors about how best to ’get the most out of them’… re-planning is currently in progress.

In my last scraps of spare time I’ve been playing a lot of Chess over Xbox Live. I'm very much enjoying the game, win or lose, as always. Here’s a related / un-related Pixar short film that I love (Geri's Game, 1997) because I don’t have anything of my own work worthy of showing yet... all filler no killer huh? Enjoy.