Codename: ULTRA is a game concept that I entered into the game design competition at SXSW this year. The game was selected as one of the casual game semifinalists, which means I won a free pass to SXSW Interactive.

I didn’t make it into the final round, but I got to meet the judges at the event and got some good feedback on the game from them.

Here are some screenshots from my presentation:

Keep reading “Codename: ULTRA” »

Link | Tags: games, SXSW

I still get asked about what happened with the Olympics stealing my game last year. I’ll try to bring everyone up to speed here.

What happened?
The Olympics stole my game.
I made a blog post about it here, and was later contacted by a reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald who wanted to write an article about the story. Apparently the reporter also contacted the Olympic Organization. While they didn’t comment for the story, the pirated game was quickly taken off the site.

Keep reading “Beijing Olympics Update” »

Link | Tags: games, Olympics, Snow Day, theft

Body Mailin’ is a game I made based on some jokes from a podcast I listen to called You Look Nice Today.

It would be too difficult for me try to explain the nuances of the game concepts here, but if you want to try to get caught up you should listen to the episodes Aunt Nancy and Truck Spank. Although completely unrelated to the game, by far my favorite moment in the history of YLNT is the Cosby dream in Episode 1.

I made the game as quick afternoon project, so it’s not quite up to the standards of my other games, and therefore not officially listed on the site, but it does have a permanent home here:
Play Body Mailin’

If you’ve never listened to YLNT, the game is guaranteed to make absolutely no sense to you.

Link | Tags: Body Mailin', games, YLNT

I have a backlog of unfinished blog entries that I’m going to try to push out over the next week or so. Some of the stuff is quite old, but I’m going to publish it anyway. So don’t be surprised when you start seeing posts about things that happened over a year ago.

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I recently had the pleasure of working with the nice people at Little Lives on a reskinned version of Witchcraft to celebrate the Singapore National Day Parade.

In addition to all new graphics and sounds, we added a game timer and high score system to keep track of who could solve the puzzle fastest.

Play ‘Unleash the Singapore Spirit’ at LittleLives.com.

Link | Tags: games, Witchcraft

You may have noticed I’ve been on hiatus for a bit, but I’m back and I’m starting on a new project. I don’t want to give too much away but it should be good.

Stay tuned.

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I had a bit of trouble getting my new Airport Extreme (802.11n) wireless router to work with my Nintendo DS when I first set it up. Hopefully this post will help others who are having the same problem.

The Problem
The Nintendo DS can only connect to a wireless network if it is secured with an older (and less secure) WEP password (or no password at all). It also uses the 802.11b spectrum. This shouldn’t be a problem because the Airport Extreme is 802.11b+g compatible, and it lets you choose a WEP password during setup. But even when I setup the base station with a WEP password my DS still complained that my network used an incompatible security mode.

The problem seems to be with the type of WEP that the Airport uses—something called Transitional Security Network. This would seem to be a great thing to have as it claims to support older WEP-only devices, but allows other devices to connect via WPA. Unfortunately the DS will have none of that.

The Solution
I began to panic when it didn’t seem that the Airport had any options to use straight-up WEP. Did I just blow $200 on a new toy that won’t play nice with my other toys?

After some frantic Googling I stumbled upon a little secret: Open the Airport Utility app and select your base station. Choose Manual Setup from the Base Station menu (or double click the base station). Select the Airport icon and then the Wireless tab.
Here comes the kicker: Next to Radio Mode option-click the drop down menu. Suddenly there are 4 new options in this menu. Choose 802.11b/g compatible [not 802.11n (b/g compatible)—confusing, I know].

With 802.11b/g compatible selected you can now choose WEP 128 bit next to Wireless Security. Enter a password, update the base station and you should be good to go.

The Downside
The downside of this setup is twofold:

1. WEP security is far inferior to WPA, and can be easily broken. Not a big deal if you’re just trying to prevent the upstairs neighbor from hogging your bandwidth, but could be an issue if you care at all about real security.

2. The base station is no longer ‘n’ compatible. You’re 802.11n devices should still be able to connect via b or g, but you’ll not get the benefits of an ‘n’ network.

Link | Tags: Airport Extreme, Nintendo DS

Fuwa Fight the Winter Clouds

This is one of the Flash games being featured on the Fun Page of The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, called ‘Fuwa Fight the Winter Clouds’. [UPDATE 3/10 : The game has been removed from the Olympic site.] The opening screen of this game looks strangely similar to the opening screen of my own game, Snow Day:

Snow Day

Probably just a coincidence though, right? The instruction screen will surely show that this is a completely different game with a unique mechanic.

Fuwa Instruction Screen

Snow Day Instruction Screen

Hmm. They do use the same mechanic. The visual composition of this screen seems remarkably similar to Snow Day as well.

Let’s take a look at the game itself:

Fuwa Game Screen

Snow Day Game Screen

Wow. Just wow.

Flash game theft is nothing new. I’m actually quite used to having my games taken without my permission, and without receiving compensation. The difference here is that this is not some crappy no-name portal. This is The Olympics.

I’d also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn’t see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I’ll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren’t being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).

Two of the other games on the Olympic site are obvious rip-offs of Ferry Halim’s Orisinal games. Compare Obstacle Race on the Olympic site with Ferry’s adorable Arctic Blue, and Leap and Leap, a clumsy copy of Winter Bells. I can’t really tell if these are clones or reskinned versions of Ferry’s files, but those stars in Leap and Leap look pretty damn similar to me.

I did some research and it seems that the web site was created by Sohu.com, the company that last year busted Google for plagiarizing from one if its products. At the time Sohu made three requests of Google: that they stop offering the software for download as quickly as possible, that they make an apology, and that they discuss compensation for the offense. I’m currently considering my legal options, but I think these three things sound like reasonable requests to make of Sohu.

The Beijing Olympic Committee has also not been lenient with copyright infringers. Back in October the director of the State Intellectual Property Office, Tian Lipu, pledged to prevent Olympic piracy. Indeed, the Olympic web site even has a page set up where you can report infringement of intellectual property rights. Evidently, they are slightly less concerned when The Olympics infringes on the rights of others.

I’m sending cease and desist letters to both Sohu and the BOCOG. More news to follow as the story unfolds.

In the meantime:
Click here to play the real Snow Day

* Thanks to Alex at Miniclip for bringing all of this to my attention.

UPDATE 3/10: The game has been removed from the Olympics site.
Also, read some nice coverage about the ordeal in the Sydney Morning Herald. Pretty much the same story as here, but with better writing…

UPDATE 3/14: Additional coverage of the story on Ars Technica, Joystiq.

Link | Comments (4) | Tags: copyright infringement, games, Olympics, Snow Day, theft

I’ve posted a prototype version of a new game called Bug Lab.

This is a Zendo-like puzzle game. The object is to determine which characteristics make up each type of bug. You earn points by guessing if you think each bug belongs to a particular bug family. Once you think you have figured out the rule(s) that make up that type of bug, you can choose to solve the puzzle. To pass the level you must identify 5 bugs as either belonging to the bug family or not. If you get them right, you move on the next level. If you get even one of them wrong though, you’ll fail the level and lose the game.

The game gives you incentive to attempt to solve the puzzle early though, as you earn bonus points for each level based on how soon you were able to solve the puzzle.

Ultimately, Bug Lab will be a downloadable desktop game. In addition to the game mode you see in the prototype, it will feature a time-attack mode, and possibly a bug-creation mode, that allows players to create their own playable bug levels.

Right now the game is still a little buggy (no pun intended), and a long way from being finished, but it should be playable (and hopefully fun) for the most part.

Play the Bug Lab Prototype

Link | Tags: Bug Lab, development, games, prototype

Yin Yang is a new game from Nitrome that appears to be based on one of Sean Howard’s ‘Three Hundred Game Mechanics’, Negative Space.

I immediately recognized the game mechanic from The Three Hundred, and was impressed that someone had actually taken one of the ideas and produced such a polished game from it. There was a lot of buzz about The Three Hundred a while ago, and while I noticed that Sean stated on the site that anyone could use the ideas, I wondered if anything would ever come out of them.

The concept is brilliant. A white character lives in a world with black sky and white ground. The white ground from that world is actually the sky for another character, who is black and walks on the black sky from the other world. In Yin Yang the player controls both characters, alternating between the two by pressing the space bar. This inversion becomes really interesting in later levels where the gravity of the two worlds is also transposed, so a deep valley in one world becomes a giant mountain when the character is changed and the worlds flip.

Keep reading “Yin Yang” »

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