Games for ninjas of all ages
Platform: iOS
Price: Free! – iOS App Store
Release Date: May 22, 2014
You are the captain of the starship Perseus. Aliens intent on wiping out human existence have come, and you alone stand against the horde. Give them Hell, Captain!
Destroy wave after wave of insidious aliens in this intense action arcade shoot-em-up. Unlock insanely powerful weapons and use them to send the enemy host into a fiery grave.
Features:
Intuitive, precise touch controls
Four intense boss fights
Procedurally generated levels for infinite replayability
Game Center leaderboards
Platform: iOS, Android
Price: $0.99 – iOS App Store – Google Play Store – Amazon App Store
Release Date: March 2, 2013
Happy Piggy! is an educational spelling game for kids, ages 2-5. Words drop from the top, and the player taps the piggy carrying the next letter to spell the word. If they pick the wrong piggy, he makes an amusing oink and runs off the screen.
A really important design choice for me when creating Happy Piggy! was to make sure that it’s always safe for kids to be playing alone. We collect no personal information, and there’s never a screen that might confuse them when they just want to play. When playing games on my iPad, my daughter regularly hands it back to me because she’s stuck in a menu or has ended up at the iTunes app store because she hit an up-sell screen.
The music in Happy Piggy! (Jenny’s Theme) is by Jason Shaw, from audionautix.com.
Platform: iOS
Price: $0.99
Release Date: September 15, 2011
Space is a dangerous place for even the most seasoned starship pilot, full of asteroids, multicolored floating blocks, and space mines. It’s even more dangerous when your accelerator is stuck to the floor and your brakes are out. Can you survive long enough to get that elusive high score or are you destined to add a new crater to the face of an unsuspecting asteroid?
Hypership was created by Fun Infused Games and released on Xbox 360 (via Xbox Live Indie Games) and Windows Phone 7. Working with Kris Steele of Fun Infused, I ported Hypership from C# to C++ and Objective-C to run naively on Apple’s iOS.
“A tremendous port of a great indie game, and a must-buy on iOS.”
Gold Award – 5 out of 5
– PocketGamer
“Hypership Out of Control is a gem of an iOS game.”
4.5 out of 5
– 148Apps
“The whole game is lovingly infused with retro style”
4 out of 5
– Touch Arcade
“highly recommended universal game that is darn fun to play”
4 out of 5
– TouchGen
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: 80 Microsoft Points
Release Date: October 15, 2010
Arr! What a horrible night to have a curse. Can Bluebones find the lost gold of Davy Jones to break the curse and return to his true form? He only has until midnight, and the clock is ticking!
Bluebones’ Curse was my second game released on Xbox 360. I created an open source 2d skeletal animation tool called Demina, and used it to create the character animations.
Free download: Bluebones’ Curse for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 3.1
The game works with an Xbox 360 controller or the keyboard. Use the arrow keys to move, Z to jump, and X to interact with doors and switches. It was designed for Xbox 360, and there seems to be a long pause when starting a new game, but it seems to be completely playable on Windows.
Platform: Xbox 360
Price: 80 Microsoft Points
Release Date: November 7, 2008
Can you help this little red guy save the princess, save the world, or whatever else it is that he’s doing? I’m sure it’s important work.
Being was created for the second Dream, Build, Play competition, and shortly after that was the fourth game released on Xbox Live Indie Games. (It was called Xbox Community Games back then.)
Free download: Being for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 3.1
The game works with an Xbox 360 controller or the keyboard. Use the arrow keys to move, Space to jump, and B to interact with doors and switches. It was designed for Xbox 360, but it seems to be completely playable on Windows.
Platform: Windows
Release Date: August 6, 2012
Seppuku Samurai was created during the August 2012 STL Game Jam. (A 48 hour game jam held in St. Louis, Missouri.) The randomly selected themes that we were required to use were strategy, lethargy, fire, guts, and upside-down.
The game is a Metroidvania style platformer, with several powerups to find, and a very small amount combat. The story in the game is utterly bizarre. A female samurai attempts to commit seppuku (a ritual Japanese suicide which involves stomach cutting), but somehow ends up delivering her baby instead, who becomes a playable character.
Free download: Seppuku Samurai for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 4.0 Refresh
The game works with an Xbox 360 controller or the keyboard. Use the arrow keys to move and jump, E to swap characters, R to attack, and Q to rotate the world. (Once you have those powerups available.)
Platform: Windows
Release Date: April 22, 2012
Light Justice was created during the April 2012 STL Game Jam. (A 48 hour game jam held in St. Louis, Missouri.) The randomly selected themes that we were required to use were light and justice.
We made a game about a personified light bulb, who is a wild west sheriff fighting off a band of moth bandits. It looks and controls like a side scrolling beat-em-up, but instead of melee brawling, you shoot at the enemies. I did some of the programming, and spent a lot of the time working on the animations. I’m really proud of how this one looks.
Free download: Light Justice for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 4.0 Refresh
Use the arrow keys to move and Z to shoot (only when enemies are in range.)
Platform: Windows
Release Date: July 10, 2011
To Grandmother’s House We Go was created during the April 2011 STL Game Jam. (A 48 hour game jam held in St. Louis, Missouri.) The theme for the jam was “Twice upon a time…”
The concept we came up with was Little Red Riding Hood meets Fight Club. In our story, Red and The Big Bad Wolf were the same character, and in truth there was no wolf, instead it was just her Tyler Durden. We decided to create essentially two different style of platformer games, and you would alternate through the levels of each character until the big reveal at the end. Of course, that was way more work than what was realistic, and what we ended up with was one very basic level for each. Oops!
So this one is a bit of a mess, but at least the concept was cool.
Free download: To Grandmother’s House We Go for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 3.1
Use the arrow keys to move, Z to jump, and A to attack in wolf form.
Platform: Windows
Release Date: January 30, 2011
In a Bubble was created during the 2011 Global Game Jam. (A 48 hour game jam held in locations all over the world.) The theme for the jam was extinction.
This was my first game jam, and I decided that I wanted to see what I could accomplish without working with a team. In the end, I spent most of my time helping other teams through problems with C# and XNA, so I didn’t accomplish all that much.
In the game, only two men and two women are all that remain of a tribe of strange people. You control a bubble that can pick them up and move them around. You need to convince them to fall in love and reproduce, to prevent the extinction of their race. If you mess up, it’s important to remember that the only cure for heartbreak is beer. (This is obviously a very serious game.)
Free download: In a Bubble for Windows
Notes: Requires XNA 3.1
Use the arrow keys to move, Z to burst.
Platform: Windows
Release Date: April 27, 2000
Bugz was created for the gamedev.net Spritelib contest, held in April 2000.
This is one of the first games I ever wrote. It only runs full screen, there’s no audio, and the controls don’t seem to be very responsive. I love that this thing was still floating about on the internet. Sadly, I was unable to find the source code. (Maybe that’s a good thing. I might have hurt myself laughing at my twelve year old spaghetti code.)
Free download: Bugz for Windows
Notes: Use the Left and Right keys to move, Up swaps pieces, Space rotates, and Enter drops a Bomb Bug.