Indie Game Development

Between Heaven and Hell ( Download | Video | Design Doc )

Between Heaven and Hell is my largest personal project to date, and is completely different from my previous game AfterShocked! in nearly every conceivable way. It is best described as a thinking man's platformer in the vein of games like Out of This World and Prince of Persia, and an homage to campy b-movies and "digitized actor" games of the early '90s. In BHAH, our hero must traverse Limbo to find his fiancee and save her from being mistakenly sent to Hell.

The game was in development from April 2004 to its release in September 2006. BHAH was an absolutely massive undertaking, and I am pleased (and pleasantly surprised) at how well it has turned out. As with AfterShocked!, I was involved in every aspect of the development process (design, programming, art, music)-- though this time I had a bit of help from various actors. Also of note, I conducted two separate beta tests on the game utilizing the students of my Games Quality Assurance class at USC in order to smooth out the gameplay and track down bugs that I missed.

The game has been well received since its release, its biggest achievement being a writeup in Games for Windows Magazine's "Freeplay" column in July 2007. GameHippo rated BHAH an 8/10, and Polish site VictoryGames gave it a 4/5.

Features:
- A full length, full-featured standalone game
- Over 90 screens filled with action, puzzles, and action puzzles
- Over 600 art assets, packed with a unique artistic style and smooth animation
- Lots of cinematics, including full voiceovers
- Over 45 minutes of original music

 

Arcanosphere ( Download )

Arcanosphere is considerably smaller in scope than my other personal projects on this page, but it is notable for being a very collaborative effort. I developed this game for a game design class with my friend and classmate Bryan Haskell, with me taking care of the programming and level design, and him creating the artwork and storyline. In addition, another collaborator, Vincent Diamante, provided the game's soundtrack.

Arcanosphere tells the story of a Wizard named Pendlebury, who must save the world from destruction with the aid of his pal, the almighty Daud'ghe Bahl. The gameplay finds players navigating the Bahl through six treacherous sky-high levels by knocking him around Arkanoid-style with a magical platform.

Working on such a collaborative game project for the first time was a very good experience, and I think the results are a testament to our ability to work successfully as a team.

 

AfterShocked! ( Download )

AfterShocked! was the first large standalone game that I released, after years of working on smaller projects. It is a graphic adventure meant to be somewhat reminiscent of games such as Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. The plot is absolutely bizarre-- a young man must save his town from being nuked by a madman while trying to improve relations between norms and zombies in this post-apocalyptic comedy.

The game's off-and-on development began in late 1999 and ended in July 2002. I was responsible for every aspect of the game (with the exception of engine development), including design, programming, art, and music.

Upon release, the game was very well received, its highest honor being included on Computer Gaming World's monthly disc for November 2002, where they had this to say:

If you can put up with the Magic Marker artwork and some off-color humor, Aftershocked is perhaps the finest spiritual successor to the old LucasArts adventure games that has ever been released. The post-apolyptic setting is just as absurd as the game's many puzzles, but the interface is so slick and the story flows so well that it's tough to stop playing once things get rolling.

The game also received an 8/10 from GameHippo.