Exploratory mini-games

As part of a 12-week game design workshop, I designed and developed several mini-games in Processing, exploring different aspects of game design such as emotion, time, and resource management. 

Each game was conceptualized, designed, and developed within five days as part of a weekly design challenge, so does not have completely polished designs.

Tower-of-defense game

​A recreation of a traditional tower-of-defense game, such as Plants and Zombies. The design challenge was to re-create an existing game in the Processing development framework. 

Nurturing plants game (resource management)

In this game, players begin with a herd of rabbits in their forest and their goal is to take care of them by feeding and protecting them from predators and disease. Players do this by growing and nurturing plants, and lose the game when all the rabbits die. 

 Zoo-keeper game (emotional design)

​The goal of the design challenge was to build an affective game which conveys sadness. Thus, players take on the role of a zoo keeper responsible for taking care of three animals who were just born into the zoo. The game progresses through several days and on each day the animal grows from the nurturing provided by the zoo keeper (i.e., player). After several days, an unexpected event limits the amount of food available in the zoo, requiring the player to make difficult choice in terms of how to distribute the limited resources. Eventually, animals who are not fed, pass from hunger making the player sad. Animations and sound were used to increase the affective aspects of the game.