After a long 2-3 weeks of being sick and having some sick kiddos, I've finally published Dicey Doubles to itch.io. You can find that playable version HERE. There are some bugs that may be present in the web version, so I encourage you to leave comments or feedback on anything you may find along the way!
This has been a much longer journey than I initially anticipated, and I'm so glad our team was able to pull through and finish the game. I'll always look back fondly to this project, but I'm also incredibly excited about what the future holds. Be on the lookout for new projects in the near future!
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I FINISHED! My journey at Full Sail has come to an end, and now we're on to exciting new stuff! Currently, I'm applying and looking for jobs at game studios. Until that time, however, I'll be working on getting a playable version of Dicey Doubles online as well as working on some smaller projects that I'll publish to the app store. Thanks so much to all of you who are waiting to see the finished product with Dicey Doubles, and all of you who are watching and supporting from the sidelines. It means the world to me! Check back in the next week or so for the playable version of Dicey Doubles. Dicey Doubles is my final project in my time at Full Sail. This blog is going to give a quick breakdown of the work I did each week so that I have something to look back at.. Hopefully, you can pick up something as well! Monday 2/12/18
Here's what it looks like when the player rotates the camera.
Dicey Doubles is my final project in my time at Full Sail. This blog is going to give a quick breakdown of the work I did each week so that I have something to look back at.. Hopefully, you can pick up something as well! Monday 2/5/18
Dicey Doubles is my final project in my time at Full Sail. This blog is going to give a quick breakdown of the work I did each week so that I have something to look back at.. Hopefully, you can pick up something as well! Monday 1/29/18
***SPOILERS AHEAD*** The Game Remember when your main goal in a video game was to get a high score? How about when the biggest threat that stood between you and Princess Peach was your mom shutting off the Nintendo by accident? Video games have changed a lot, and while many still focus on a simple quest or achieving a high score, others are venturing into new ways that people can interact with this medium. Enter, Life Is Strange. Life Is Strange is a story-based game in which you make decisions that will affect what happens. Many, but not all, of your choices throughout the game can dramatically alter the course of the story. There is, however, one intriguing twist. You can rewind time to change a decision if you aren’t pleased with the outcome. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can rewind all the way back to the beginning of the game to change a decision you made. Normally you have a short window of time after big decisions that allows you to rewind and change your mind. Most of Life Is Strange is spent exploring the environment and talking to people about the happenings in Arcadia Bay - the town in which the game takes place. You play as a girl named Max who just moved back to Arcadia Bay after spending a few years in Seattle. While Max is struggling with being at a new school and making new friends, she discovers that she can manipulate time. More accurately, when she focuses she can rewind time back a few minutes. Having this ability, you make your way through the town attempting to uncover the mystery of a missing girl as well as maintain meaningful relationships. But of course, that’s all up to you. I was shocked at the amount of detail that went into the environments in this game. Simply entering a person’s room was enough to gather a multitude of information about their past, their personality, and what they may be dealing with at the time. In fact, collecting details about people is incredibly helpful in progressing through the game. At one point, I had gathered some information about a girl from her room that allowed me to save her life. I straight-up felt like Sherlock. The incredible thing about the environments is the stories they held. You could look through a person’s room and write a book about it. Moving from their nightstand to their desk looking at pictures and getting REALLY nosey on their computers was like watching a slideshow about their lives. I felt like I really got to know these characters. After finishing the story I realized that I had not felt as connected to characters in a game since The Last Of Us. The strongest point of Life Is Strange is without a doubt it’s supporting cast. Max can be a bit much to take in at first, but once you get to know her better, she becomes a really interesting piece of this narrative. Almost every other person you regularly interact with is really interesting. Aside from a handful of bad voice acting moments and a few awkward cut scenes, each character meant something to me. Mechanically speaking, there’s not a lot going on here. You have conversations, look for clues to gain insight about people, and rewind conversations in order to maintain or destroy relationships. There are, however, occasions where you need to use your rewind power to solve puzzles. This is the great schism of the game. I absolutely loved any of the puzzles that were put before me. It took some thought, but none of them felt impossible. In fact, many had multiple solutions that rendered different outcomes later on in the game. My wife didn’t have the same experience. She really struggled completing some of the puzzles and I ended up helping here with the solutions many times. In a game where the player is given so much freedom narratively, it’s interesting that there would be moments where players may feel restricted. I have only played through the game once, and my wife is currently about halfway through, but I am already seeing some MAJOR differences in our progression. There is no way that both of us can see the same story play out until the end, and that’s this game’s strongest point. No two people will have the same experience, yet they will each live the same story. In my experience, Life Is Strange is about dealing with grief and loss. It’s about learning how to move on even if you could change everything. For somebody else, it may be about the power of love and how it can conquer any obstacle. Either way, this is an experience that you shouldn’t miss. Play it. My Take (This is where I gat kind of emotional and talk about the impact this game had on me personally.) Playing through this game caused me to do a lot of self-reflection. What type of person am I trying to be? If I had the power to re-live certain moments of my life, would I take it? How about if I lost my wife? Would I do whatever it takes to bring her back? What if it meant that I would lose everyone else close to me? The name of this game is Life Is Strange, and that is a true statement. Many times life hands us situations that just suck. Each of us have days where we just can’t win. So what do we do? At the very beginning of the game Max is hiding in the bathroom when a boy with a gun shoots a girl (this girl turns out to be Max’s best friend, Chloe) and kills her. Max reaches out to stop him, and this is when she realizes she can rewind time. After rewinding to a few minutes earlier, Max saves Chloe’s life by pulling the fire alarm. The rest of the game is about the adverse effects of that decision. The world literally begins to collapse upon itself. There are two moons at one point, it’s snowing in 80 degree weather, and a giant tornado threatens the town. But in the end, you’re still given the choice. Save Chloe and destroy the entire town, or let Chloe die and save everyone. Sometimes, life gives us situations that suck. So what will we do? Do we continue to let the world fall apart because we don’t want to face the reality of losing something, or do we let something we love go in order to move on? Just like life, the game gives you the right to choose. Grief is hard, and dealing with loss is never easy. Whether it’s losing a loved one, saying goodbye to a great friend, or giving up on a dream, each one of us will have to choose one day. Hold on, or let go? Video games are powerful tools that can help people see the world differently. They can be used for entertainment, education, or even to teach us empathy. And while you may never play a game like Life Is Strange, don’t discount the potential of a masterfully told story that lets you step into the pages and become a part of the narrative. ***SPOILERS AHEAD*** As a kid, I developed an unusual fear of the ocean. It’s not that I’m necessarily afraid of the water. I can swim, and pools don’t bother me at all. For whatever reason the vastness of the ocean just made me feel uneasy. The unusual thing about my fear is that it doesn’t involve animals nearly as much as it does inanimate objects. Sharks? No problem. A statue of Poseidon, Lord of the Ocean? Terrifying. Playing Abzu evoked some of those fears and replaced them with wonder. As Abzu begins, the first thing that caught my attention was the fluidity of the controls. I can’t remember ever playing a game in which underwater navigation was pleasing. Most of the time it seems like water in video games is used as a hurdle that serves to make a section or level of the game more difficult. Swimming in Abzu, however, felt so incredibly natural. One thing I did have to change pretty early one was the camera inversion. Other than that, I could always go exactly where I wanted to go. The movement felt like an extension of myself rather than a hinderance to my exploration. Flipping around, breaching the surface of the water, boosting through schools of fish; it was all so satisfying. The controls were like nothing else I had experienced, but what pulled me into the experience was the innovative soundtrack. I have never (I’m not exaggerating here) played a game with as good of a musical score as Abzu. The music made each emotional moment more meaningful; It made all of the fast-paced moments more exciting. When I would enter into exploration areas the music was present, but not overwhelming. This pivotal presence of sound throughout each environment is what helps create such contrast in the moments the music stops. It’s almost as if the narrator of this story is the score itself. Abzu contains no dialogue. Evocative of games like Journey or Flower, everything must be interpreted through your environment. While I don’t presume to know precisely everything Abzu developer Giant Squid was trying to say with this experience, I certainly had a meaningful takeaway. To me, Abzu is all about the power of life over death. Throughout the game you come across sections that are dark and void of life. These areas stand out because the entire world around you up to that point is filled with color and sound. But as you approach the mysterious portals and interact with them, it seems clear that your duty here is to restore what was once a thriving and lively community. There are other aspects of the story I have yet to totally decipher, and I purposefully have not yet read other reviews. I’d like to mull over it myself for a bit, because this game was very meaningful to me. My fear of the ocean is based on the fact that there is so much we don’t know about the deep. Giant creatures are living for centuries without ever interacting with us. Ships are lost to the sea and never found again. The ocean is unfathomably large. Abzu makes the ocean feel alive. It tells a story of resurrection and life in the context of an environment bursting with color, sound, and history. Abzu isn’t perfect. The load screens were a bit long, but they weren’t horrible. I also experienced a few minor frame drops when lots of creatures were on screen, but there’s nothing critically wrong here. The graphics aren’t realistic, but the animations of the sea creatures made them feel so lifelike. When I reached the final moments of the game and I was freely swimming alongside the shark, I found myself laughing out loud. I was literally overcome with joy. In fact, by the end of the game, my mouth was sore from smiling so much. As Abzu drew to a close, I couldn’t help but wonder about the shark. Maybe this wasn’t the intended message, and maybe I’m looking into this way too much, but I saw the character’s relationship with the shark like my relationship with the ocean. I have this weird fear of the ocean because I don’t know it. My misunderstanding is what leads to my fear. As the character in Abzu progresses through the game, they begin to understand the shark more. Fear is replaced with love, and death is replaced with life. In the end, you work together with the shark to destroy the entity that has been spreading darkness through the deep. Love brings life which conquers death. It was beautiful. Abzu is an affordable, short (3-4 hours), yet meaningful experience that I would highly recommend. If you’d like to be inspired, play this game. |
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