Teddy Rescue

TEDDY RESCUE

Title: Teddy Rescue

Genre: Action Platformer

Role: Storyboard, Audio, Game Design

Teddy Rescue is a game I have been working on since my second year in college. I currently run the Game Design Group, a subgroup of the Computer Science club at California State University of Channel Islands. The development of this game has been rocky at times. This club was started by me and fellow colleagues. Interest wanes throughout the year so we lose and gain people at random. But I am happy at our current progress with music, animations, and working code. By the end of next semester, my group hopes to finish a working demo to show to our school and hopefully increase interest in the group.

As I said before, development has been troubling. Our group, each of us new to the field, did not know where exactly they belonged. We more or less all worked together on all parts of the game at the beginning. Today, all of our current members have our individual roles. I aided others in the workings of our story and created the theme music of the game.

Story: In the future, every little task is done by robots. From maintenance to gardening, robots are everywhere. But suddenly all the robots have gone berserk and haywire. Our hero, quietly enjoying his milk and cookies at his grandparents' house, was robbed of his best friend - his teddy bear Grizzles Bearington! Armed with only a squirt gun, he must face the mechanical terrors of the city to rescue his friend!

Design: We all agreed that we should start simple and made a 2D platformer. It would not be a challenging platformer. It never went beyond jumping over holes or onto hills and such. The player's only defense against the colorful robots is a squirt gun. It was unlimited, due to the easy manner of our game, and only solved to hamper robots.Sometimes the player would need to be clever about where they hit the robot. Some robots would have a frontal defense so the player would have to jump behind the robot to hurt them.

Our game was geared towards children so there was no real deaths in Teddy Rescue. Whenever the player was hurt, the player's avatar would cry for a moment to show damage. And in three hits, he would simply sit down and cry until the Game Over screen appeared.

C.R.A.I.D.

Title: C.R.A.I.D.

Genre: Action Platformer

Role: Storyboard, Game Designer

C.R.A.I.D is a project I worked on in my third year of college. It was developed in my Foundations of Computer Game Development class. I worked with three others on this project. By the end of the semester, we were able to develop a working prototype of the game. We planned for this game to have eight levels plus a final boss at the end. I developed the lore and worked with another group member to design how the game functioned. 

Story: Planet Raeth is dying. Its two children, the mechanized Humans and the mystical Daemons, are in a bloody war for dominance over the diminishing resources. Chaotic atrocities are committed on both sides as their endless war rages on. To gain an edge in their struggle, the Humans have captured and experimented on many young Daemons to develop a bioweapon to end the war. Craid, a Daemon turned bioweapon, is set loose into the world by chance. A renegade weapon to the Humans and a dangerous tool to the Daemons, both factions are out to put him down. With the war breathing down his neck, Craid must search for a peaceful place where he can figure out his own purpose. Yet self discovery is quite difficult when not only the world is out to get you, but your own mind as well. Craid must be vigilant in his journey for solitude else his AI mind revert him back into a bloodthirsty war machine.

Design: Due to our lack of skill and time, C.R.A.I.D was designed to be a 2D action platformer. It would have 8 levels, each with alternating Human and Daemon bosses. The 9th level, which is simply a large boss fight, would contain the final boss of the game. Each level basically consisted of Craid trying to escape the hordes of Daemons and legions of Humans. Each level would be littered with unique enemies and branching pathways, a la Castlevania III. It would be within each level that the story would be expanded upon. Side characters were created for future uses if made available, such as Sarge, a wolf Daemon lieutenant who would eventually join Craid.

The element that would make C.R.A.I.D differ from any other game would be the power up system. Like Megaman or Metroid, players would gain new abilities from bosses. Each power up would be something unique to said boss, like a jetpack from a Human or demonic wings from a Daemon. At the start of each level, the player would be able to choose which power ups they would like to use during the level. There are three categories of power ups: attack, defense, and mobility. Each power up would greatly differ from each other, like one attack power up would be used for melee and another for ranged. It would all depend on the player's choice. This wraps well with our branching path idea as some paths might not open due to having the wrong power ups equipped at the time. This gives players some idea of differing playthroughs.