An Apple a Day... Doctor - Explained

An Apple a Day... Doctor is an art game, well it's trying to be an art game. In other words, the game is trying to vehicle a message by his mechanics or some people might say gameplay. I wont used gameplay because of the lack of cohesion in the definition. A couple of games can be mentions as such art game (pretty classic) : Passage, Braid, Marriage, etc. These games vehicle a message from their game mechanics. And An Apple a Day tries to vehicle a message from his mechanics too.

In An Apple a Day, you play as the Doctor, you role is to be the doctor that you want. So as a player you explore the possibilities of the mechanics and you discover different meaning too your actions. A way to play An Apple a Day is to find the more "ending" possible. I would say the way to play this game is by trying to understand your action as a doctor and understanding the effect of your choices.

You can consider the game finish when you found four "ending" but I can tell you that there is still a little more to find. The game is all about choices, it is normal to feel a little confused about the actions you make at first. The actions all make sense after a few play.

You can play the Game :

HERE

READ THIS PART AFTER PLAYING

Is there any message? By looking at the game and the title you can figure out that the theme is : An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well at first I though that will be could to avoid the doctor as an "human" and by eating apple the doctor will just go away. The idea sounds pretty straight forward, but the problem was the game will turn out into a sort of avoiding game with a theme. I wanted to play the theme, not to add a theme to some mechanics. So I turned out the game, what would happen if the player was the doctor. I first I was going to make the inverse of an avoider game, like running after everything green in the screen, but after playing I wish I were the moon Daniel Benmergui. I was looking for something smooth and relax. I took a little bit of the structure of finding different "ending" according to the choices of the player.

This allowed me to really explore the meaning of choices. If the player eat all the apples in the games, there is no way the npc could heal them self other then the doctor bringing them the hospital. So the player just fill up the hospital. If the player play again and decide to wait a little bit, the NPC will heal them self and just one will stay there, sick. So the player will go help him, because there is no way he could get an apple. In that case, the player really understood what the game is about, it is about acting when it is the right time, when people need you. So the player knows his role. After that, by exploring the rest of the possibilities, by thinking, you can understand what everything means. I am not going to spoiled the rest of the game... you will have to find yourself.

Thank you to Frank, Max and Simon for helping testing.

Number to Number Combat on Math Nook

Hello Everyone,

Great new Number to Number Combat just joined Math Nook.

Math Nook is a website full of Math Games, I hope the game will do great there. Teachers use the website as a teaching tool.

You can play Number to Number Combat here.

Number to Number Combat

Hello,

This month is been a super busy week, master study are a little more work than I thought it will be. Here my first game using flash.

PLAY HERE

The game is quite simple, by finding the right answer to the equation you hit your opponent, he does the same thing. You level up after each level. This game is made for the theme for October at experimental gameplay project. The game is not really hard, you learn the mechanics and master them in about three fights. The challenge was for me, it is my first game using flash, I was a good experience, except for the preloader. Otherwise, flash is really well made to design and change the content easily.

I hope your enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed making it.

Enigma Machine

Hello everyone,

Recently I have been working for the university as a spoke men for computer science. So I decided for the cause to program the Enigma Machine used by the German during WWII. It was used for encryption and decryption of messages.

I know this is not a game but I thought the thing was pretty cool. So I put here to share it with the world wide web.

DOWNLOAD HERE

If anyone is interested in seeing the code, it build using XNA/C#, I will be more than willing to send it to you.

Failure on Clubic

Well, I was so excited when I found out that Clubic.com (a French website about everything touching computers) post my little game on their website with a super review. That is pretty amazing and I am really happy about it. The game is going way farther than I though it will go.

CHECK THIS LINK

Merci beaucoup à tout le monde qui a téléchargé et joué à mon jeu.

Well I am so excited to make other games. On the website they found a little trick so you can get more points. That would explain why the scores are so high - last time I checked it was 73. I made the game and my best performance is 28, so I suck at my own game now. Well I never though that I would said that, but that is cool to suck at your own game!

Failure (Minimalist)

Hey everyone,

After talking with one of my old art teacher, I decided to change my concept a little bit. The changes are to make this game like a minimalist work. I haded some music from Alva Noto, change the graphics based on minimalist work (full black on white) and I change the sounds. I think the changes made the game looks even better, but its more a matter of taste. Actually the game would be presented in about a month at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (Oeuvre de l'autre).

DOWNLOAD HERE

Music from : Alva Noto

Failure : Experimental Gameplay

Well, this month is been a lot more busy than I thought it would be. First I just started my master, I am working on an other game for the Xbox (Indie Games) and I just joined the university's badminton team too.

This month theme was really hard for me, I just could not find any good idea. As French my first language, failure sounds really alike "Faille", well actually just the beginning match. I came up with a concept of a game, where the player, by rotating some rectangles pieces, have to make them pass the sort of a "Faille" in English breach. After a couple of research about the word failure, I discover that you could said that a breach is like a failure, some discussion could be done here.


I think the game is just a little prototype for some base mechanics. I was thinking that some special blocks would add a lot to the game, like red that makes the breach bigger, yellow would slow down the blocks, blue would give more points, etc. It took me three days to make the game.

Controls : Rotate with left or right keys or A n D.
Make the form going faster with Space.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Game Idea : J Tremblay
Music by : MMANNYY

A look back on Strip The Forest Bare

I learned a lot from reading comments, playing and making Strip the Forest Bare. Here some of my observations.

What went Good :

• The game is working great, there is no apparent bug (As one of my first games that is something that matters).
• The drawing is cute.
• The online Highscore is working good too (It was my first time programming online connection).
• I had good comments about the poem at the end.
  
• In general the game is OK.
  

What went Wrong :

• The game is not fun enough. The challenge increase but not the fun. If I was Valve I would had cancel my project and start it all over again. Since I am not and I was doing the one week challenge, well I just could not do it all again.
• The controls are a little off, it took a little bit of adaptation to understand how to cut the trees perfectly.
• There is nothing special about it, so why the player would play the game. The game is just a little dull, the player is always doing the same thing, the game doesn't reinvent itself after a while, so I think that is where the game starts to be dull.

In general I am trying to learn from my mistakes, by imposing myself to keep everything as minimum as possible, I made the mistake to not listen to the game itself, but only to my base idea. I think that were all the problems came from.

Here my super algorithm about games:

Exprimental Gameplay : Strip the Forest Bare

Strip the Forest Bare is a little game where you play Thiery a lumberjack. Thiery likes to make money by cutting down trees, but the bears are not happy about it and will try to stop him. In other words you play a lumberjack, in order to make money you have to avoid bears and cut trees down.

You can download the game here.

This game is an entry to the Experimental Gameplay Project for the month of august, the theme was "Bare Minimum". I tried to think about something with pixels and 8-bit sounds to keep the game as minimum as possible. In the mean time I could not stop thinking about the kid poem's :

Fuzzy Wuzzy
Was a Bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy
Had no Hair...

So I decided to include bears in my game cause of the rhyme, I came up with a game where the player is making money by destroying the bears' home. I am not really an environmental activist, I thought that the metaphor of destroying someone's home to make money was just something that could make people think, myself included. So in regards to the minimum of the theme, I tried to keep all the controls as minimum as possible; walking and cutting. The same applied to the bears' AI, when you are close enough they will chase you otherwise they wander around. As for the bare part of the theme well, try to strip the forest bare.

Thanks Hades for the music.

I hope you enjoy the game as I enjoy making it.

Phono Alliance on Co-Optimus

That is amazing we got an article on the Co-optimus website.

Here the link

Phono Alliance in the Dream Build Play contest

Phono Alliance is now an official entry in the Dream Build Play contest. You can check it out here. You can also view all the other entries in the game gallery.

Gameplay Video : Phono Alliance

There is the video for Phono Alliance, it will be used as our entry for the Dream Build Play challenge.We hope the game will be well received by the XBOX community.


Music by Cyrerin.

Annoucement : Phono Alliance on XBOX

Phono Alliance is the first title of Soft Hope to come out on XBOX. It's a procedural music based platformer, single and mutiplayer game.

The player will have to prove to the village that he can be usefull, especially to the Butcher. The Butcher is the player’s first and last foe. The player will have to venture into an exotic dinosaur infested land, an oversized baby playroom, a port full of pirates and a quiet village. In every level, there will be something different to do like protecting the oversized baby from the oversized teddy bears, growing a dinosaur’s egg, protect the pot of gold from the pirates and etc. For more experienced players, the game provides an intense mode with more precise beats, more enemies and more things to do.

In other words the game can be resume as a sort of a Patapon meets Mario type game. It is a free moving plateformer, but for every action of the player (defence, speed, attack) the players have to push the buttons at the right tempo in a 4/4 structure. Well it seems hard to understand, but it works real nice. The game is coop game too, I think that where the game is a it's best.

Unexperimental Shooter : Metro Shooter

J'ai décider de participer à Experimental Project, j'ai fait un petit shooter qui a pour thème majeur le métronome, j'ai voulu explorer l'état de détente et de concentration qu'on doit avoir afin de bien suivre un métronome à un certain rythme. Alors dans Metro Shooter, il faut suivre le rythm donné, plus on tire dans le rythme plus notre vaisseau est puissant, si on est plus dans le rythme notre vaisseau se détériore. Afin de réussir le jeu il faut amasser 1000 points.

I decided to participe to Experimental Project, I did a little shooter using a metronome as the main theme, at first I wanted to explore the state of flow needed to follow the right rhythm. So in Metro Shooter, the player have to follow the rhythm in other to get upgrades on the ship, otherwise the ship will break up. However, the game is over when he reached 1000 points.

Download here : Metro Shooter

Vous devriez avoir besoin du framework 3.0 de Microsoft.

It needs Microsoft Framework 3.0.

Thank you Pierre for the help testing. Merci

Video Mezzo

Here a video of our first game prototype :

F Prototype Named : Mezzo

Après beaucoup d'exploration de nom nous avons choisi de nommer F - Prototype, Mezzo. Ce nom est composé de la racine greque : melos, ce qui signifie mélodie. Nous avons joué avec la sonorité de cette racine pour lui donner quelques saveurs italiennes. Voilà Mezzo.

After much thought, we have chosen to name Prototype-F Mezzo. We chose ‘Mezzo’ based on the greek root: melos which means melody. We then played with the sound, looking for an italian flavour, and thus Mezzo was born.

Du même coup, Mezzo a son propre menu maintenant. La thématique tourne au tour de l'univers. Voyez par vous même :

In other news, Mezzo has it’s own menu now. The theme is the universe. See it for yourself:

Games

Here my super static page

High Concept Ajouté - Add

Bonjour, lors de notre cours de réalisation de jeux vidéo nous avons été amené a produire des concepts de jeu vidéo. C'est alors que nous avons présenté Lily : un concept de jeu en deux dimensions se passant dans un univers incertain mélangeant plante et technologie et D : un concept avant-gardisme d'aventure où l'on doit découvrir ce qui se passe dans une université. A noter que ce dernier est en production. Finalement, nous vous présentons aussi le "high-Concept" qui a permis la réalisation de F - Prototype. Tout les concepts sont écrit en français.

Hello, during a Video Game Realization course, we have created several high concepts video games. We presented Lily: a two dimensional game in an environment that mixes plants and technology and D: a game involving avant-gardism gameplay in order to discover what is happenning in a university. The last concept is now in production. Finally, we introduce you to the "high concept" that we used for the realisation of F - Prototype. All of the concepts are written in French.

On peut télécharger les Concepts dans la section "High concept" du blog.

Downloading is aviable in the "High Concept" section of this blog.

Realisation : F - Prototype

Dernièrement, nous nous sommes penchés sur la question de l'élaboration de jeu musical. Suite à quelques recherches, nous nous sommes inspirés principalement de deux jeux : Everyday Shooter et PixelJunk Eden.

Recently, we have been conceptualizing the creation of a musical game. Following some of our research, we have been inspired by two games : Everyday Shooter and PixelJunk Eden.

Nous recherchions à créer un environnement musicalement dynamique et haut en couleur, afin d'offrir une grande possibilité de choix au joueur. En d'autres mots un environnement ouvert qui permet au joueur de s'exprimer pleinement.

We were looking to create a dynamic and colorful musical environment, in order to give the player a great range of possibilities. In other words the player must be able to express himself perfectly within the possibilities offered by the game.

Nous nous sommes posé la question suivante : comment peut-on représenter la musique? Nous avons visualisé chaque piste musicale par un filament de couleur différent. Le joueur joue le rôle d'une entitée de ronde-carrée qui peut repousser tous les éléments "Belliqueux". Les ennemis ne sont pas nécessairement méchants, leurs rôle ne sont pas de détruire, mais de modifier l'équilibre sonore du jeu. De ce fait, chaque ennemi est attiré par un filament différent associé à sa couleur. Quand l'ennemi est arrêté sur un filament, il se nourrit du son qui est associé à la piste sonore, autrement dit, l'intensité sonore diminue. Alors, en fonction de l'arrangement des ennemis, le joueur peut jouir d'un environnement musical toujours changeant dépendant de ces choix.

We asked ourselves : How can we represent the music? We represented each musical track with a different color filament. The player is the rounded square shape that can push back the "bellicose" elements. These antagonists are not necessarily the enemy. Their role is not to destroy, but to modify the sound environment. Consequently, every antagonist is attracted by a filament associated with its color. When it stops on a spot, the antagonist feeds on the sound associated with the colour track, thus decreasing the sound intensity. Therefore, depending on the position of the antagonists, the player can enjoy an ever-changing musical environment controlled by his or her choices.

Nous pourrions continuer plus loin dans une autre discussion, à savoir si F est un jeu.

We could have a further discussion regarding if F is really a game?

Pour le téléchargement de ce prototype : F-Prototype

For downloading the prototype : F-Prototype

Concept : Jonathan Tremblay et Mathieu Montreuil
Programmation : Jonathan Tremblay
Art : Mathieu Montreuil
Automne 2009 - Hiver 2010

Welcome - Bienvenue

Ce blog nous permetteras de partager nos réalisations au cours de nos trois années d'université. On pourra y trouver des concepts de jeu, des prototypes de jeu et des réalisations.

We will use this blog in order to share our work over our three years of development. Here one may find our game concepts, prototypes and completed projects.

Merci and Enjoy