I absolutely love getting my hands dirty in editor and exploring new ideas & designs that are stuck in my head. I primarily use Game Maker Studio to allow me to focus on my core strengths of design & vision whilst maintaining a simple workflow & art style.
These are a selection of the hundreds of game jams & prototypes i have built over the last decade, varying from small weekend projects to months long endeavours to scratch that creative itch that all designers have!
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ZOMBIE DEFENSE
The objective of this prtototype was to develop a mindlessly satisfying one button experience to play in the background to doing other things.
This prototype sees a player shooting unlimited hordes of zombies whilst the weapon automatically upgrades in the background based on experience.
I later explored this concept further and developed a small mobile idle game that saw players choosing between various weapons and progressing nights to earn cash.
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IDLE DUNGEON
I’ve always been interested in the concept of games that play themselves, Idle Dungeon was a an exploration into this concept.
The game sees a character automatically moving through procedurally generated dungeons & recieving a choice of upgrades
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SINE WAVES
After a discussion about procedural generation at the pub with a friend (interesting pub talk!), i decided i wanted to spend a few hours experimenting with sine-waves & procedural generation to explore the possibility of building a fully code generated endless runner game.
The game never really went anywhere, but provided really great foundational understanding of proc-gen & different types of programatically generated waves & curves.
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REFILL STORE MANAGER
My wife & I ran an eco-friendly sustainable Refill store over 2022 & 2023, we always thought it would make a brilliant management type game. I spent a weekend building a small management game that saw you as a small little shop keeper maintaining your shelves with stock – to be honest i may have gotten overly excited with the idea of a cat customisation tool though!
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PROC-GEN PLATFORMER
The idea of generating content based on rules to me, as a designer, is a really exciting concept for how to create a truly consistent experience.
After a few experiments with proc-gen, i wanted to explore how to procedurally generate something a bit more complex and built a small platformer that used a simple set of rules to generate interesting spaces filled with small interactions, enemies & items.
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CITY BUILDER
This was a simple prototype around building simple cities, it never really evolved beyond the initial desire to want to build small townscapes as it lacked a strong vision but was an interesting thought experiment into understanding management games.
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I WANT TO EXPLORE
I Want to Explore is a small point-and-click exploration game set inside a snow globe, this was less of a design prototype and really more of an exploration into building 2D spaces using the simplest art style possible that still felt coherent.
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HELIUM
Helium was a Ludum Dare 46 competition entry developed over 48 hours during Lockdown. The theme was “Keep it Alive”, for this theme i was quite keen to avoid the obvious route of having a glass-cannon player.
I focused on building a small satisfying puzzle platformer which saw the player avoiding hazards and enemies to keep the balloon alive. The character has unlimited lives, so the real test is how to navigate to the exit whilst still holding the balloon – careful of your own weapon which can also destroy your balloon.
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MATCH 3 SHOOTER
For Ludum Dare 54 the theme was “Combine 2 Incompatible Genres”. I love the idea of mixing incompatible elements to challenge the conventions of genres, so i took the two most different game genres i could think to mix & match.
In Match 3 shooter, you play a relatively standard Match-3 game… with the exception you use a machine gun to interact. To add a sense of conflict to the game, you must navigate the island, avoiding hazards and enemies to gain more ammo & power-ups.
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DINO PHOTO HUNT
Non-violent games really appeal to my inner-designer, as they present the challenge of how to create interesting conflict.
This prototype was about chasing dinosaurs through the environment, dropping the correct types of bait and taking the best photographs of them possible. Bonus points for them being in the open, in groups, or interesting environments.
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STABILITY SIMULATOR
Myself and a friend developed Stability Simulator for a game jam in Pinewood Studios, London over a 24 hour period and demo’d it on stage to a room of over 200.
This was a really enjoyable prototype to make, affectionaly we refer to this as “QWOP meets Hole in the Wall” with whacky, multiplayer controls it was great to make something that got such a laugh from the audience.
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TEXT ADVENTURE
I remember playing text adventures as a kid and being blown away by the immersion of the small ascii characters on screen. For this prototype i was enticed by the idea of highly-quality audio setting the scene against a totally unimmersive set of visuals to see if i could deliver a sense of place & setting.
In this game you explore a small crafted natural environment, find resources & survive against the odds of the weather… all whilst listening to foley sounds i recorded out in the local woodland trails.
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Remember the fallen
During the height of the Walking Dead, Skybound hosted a game jam around the theme “All Out War”. Myself and a friend entered the jam with only a weekend of the weeks time available and built a visual novel with a narrative experience that explored the fall & tragedy out of war. We ended up winning “Best Overall Game” for Remember the Fallen.
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UPSY DOWN
Upsy Down was developed for Brains Eden game jam with a small team over a 48 hour period. We challenged ourself to build a leisurely puzzle platforming experience that took place in two gravity directions.
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SQUIDGIES
Squidgies was developed for a 48 hour game jam with the sam team that made Upsy Down, our goal was to create satisfying puzzler which we could build tonnes of content for and would be suitable for a PC or Mobile environment.
The land of Squidgies is filled with cute blocks and their king, return the king to the correct tile to succeed the level.. Shapes on the left move right & down, shapes of the right move left & up – careful not to get them stuck in the mud though.
Joe Kinglake :: Game Director 