Big Move Announcement #3: We won the MSC pitch!

Level up! My team has just won the MSC IP Creator's Challenge pitch. We have been awarded a grant of RM 50,000 to create a game within 6 months, along with two other winning teams. That's seriously the first time I received a freaking big cheque lol, size-wise and finance-wise.

More photos of the pitch are available at http://cmc.msc.com.my/event_detail.php?ID=242. Man I look so stupid in the first photo :S Thanks to Sora for the link!

The team celebrated in Chilis One Utama. You have no idea how hard it was to hide that cheque while walking towards the restaurant. Not something you wanna show to the crowd you know. Though after dinner, Nyin waved the cheque all over the place :S

(L - R)

My close sisters, Leeyean (Interface Designer) and Leenyin (Art Director). Nyin was the interface designer for Ballistic Wars (except the crappy main menu, done by yours truly :P). Yean is the artist for the upcoming Puzzerella Pizza game, which is coming out... uhh, soon *sweat*

Beside them is one cool guy.

Daim (Character Designer) couldn't make it for obvious reasons, so we connected to his hologram projection unit in Tokyo. He created those ball-ish characters in Ballistic Wars.

The one showing the thumbs up in style is Aidi (3D Modeler and Animator). He has the word "future" written all over. He also created the enemy ships in The Last Canopy.

And Adrian (Lead Programmer) is new to the team, so everyone say hi! He's my good friend whom I've known since college days. And he just continued WoW! Hooray!



Let's talk a little about the game. No Straight Roads is an arcade shooter that was inspired by arcade titles such as Rail Chase and House of the Dead. Basically we will spoon-feed the action for you. We'll change the camera angle and add rich visual narrative to the playing experience.

All you do is just move the mouse to shoot and drive. You only do one of the two at any given time. No matter how intense the action or point-of-view is, you just need to use your mouse to shoot and drive. That's what makes the game casual enough for everyone to play.

The game is also inspired by Gurren Lagann and Speed Racer. In other words, it's gonna be an AWESOME experience. The car is gonna skid on the walls, its movements are clumsy and we will have crazy boss battles that needs your wit to defeat them.

No Straight Roads will be in 3D, with the characters being 2D (billboard images in 3D space). It will be downloadable on the PC. I have a partnership link with a New York-based publisher at the moment, so I will use that to propose this game as a console downloadable as well, on PSN, XBLA or WiiWare.

The screenshot above is done by Leenyin. She did a great job compiling everyone's work to create such a vibrant and exciting scene.



The story is set in a future post-apocalyptic world where an evil company reigns to take advantage of the situation. They are called Straight Roads Inc. Hence the game name.

Ayola (the girl on the right) is part of the rebel force (hmmmm this is starting to sound familiar...) that opposes the company. One day, she fought them on her bike, but lost completely. Trying to run away, she hailed a taxi that belonged to Marty (the guy on the left). Reluctantly, he let her in, and drove the taxi out of the city. The game starts here!

Of course, Daim did the character designs, which are excellent as usual :)



And this is the futuristic taxi that Aidi built. His sense of how the future looks like never fails to amaze me, and he has put a lot of thoughts to come up with such a sleek-looking car. Kudos!

I still haven't figured a name for the car yet. Anyone have any ideas?



And this is the logo of No Straight Roads, done again by expert visualizer Nyin.



Nyin has also done an amazing job with the pitch document, taking everyone's drawings and my writing, then montaging them nicely into a great page layout. This is a one-page preview of the pitch document, and no doubt it has helped a lot to win the hearts of the judges.

So yea that's the game. I couldn't have done it without this team chock full of talent and dedication. Ah to be surrounded by geniuses, I'm so blessed. :) Thank you so much, team! We have finally done it, though the true work starts now! Korekara mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu. (I shall depend on you guys even from now.)

Oh speaking of which, Daim with a beanie reminds me of a game character...

The Last Canopy on YouTube!

You know what makes a game designer really happy? It's when you have fans posting up video walkthroughs of your game on YouTube!

I dunno who this Pseani is, but damn s/he's good! Even though I know the game in and out, s/he's so much better than me! On the hardest mode (You're nuts mode), Pseani could make it through the first 3 levels with 14 lives left :O The fairy was hit only once! Nuts!

I don't think I ever won You're Nuts mode before, kakakaka. Yup, I can't beat my own game :P

Because of the 10 minute limit, Pseani posted 4 videos for the Hard mode walkthrough, and another 4 for You're Nuts. Here's the video of the last level in the hardest mode:

Walkthrough of Final Stage (You're Nuts mode)



Whoever you are, Pseani, thanks for posting the awesome vid. You got some mad skillz there!

If you don't even have a fraction of Pseani's skill, how about hacking it instead? I dunno what software is used, but your life could be reset to 999! Look at the vid below.

Hacking The Last Canopy



And on a related note, The Last Canopy is chosen as the Friday game of the Buried Treasure week on Kongregate. Get over there and earn some badges while you're at it! The comments there are interesting to read too, coz it's obvious that they either love it or hate it. It's hard to strike a balance when the casual community is massive. Go to http://www.kongregate.com/games/ahbonk/the-last-canopy.

Busy busy busy

Yikes, been awhile since I've been here!

My baby vaio (figuratively; I didn't give birth to it!) died on me a week ago. Things just had to happen when you have a deadline to meet. Thank god it's ok now, and it's even faster than before coz I installed Windows XP. Wahaha finally! Vista suxxxxxx...

I'm so terribly busy with all the game-making, which is a good thing. Tiring, but good. Here are the latest game projects I'm working on:



We have contacts in New York who's interested in publishing the new Ballistic Wars. It's to be more centric on strategy rather than puzzle, so it has resource collecting and the ability to build new units!



This is Puzzerella Pizza (Puzzle + Mozzarella! Get it? Get it?!), a Match-3 game featuring yummy pizza toppings! Nyin and Yean have finished the designs already, but I haven't polished up the programming yet (Sorry muis!). Its production will be back on track after the MSC IP Creator's Challenge.



Working with Chen Li aka Ms. Mangkuk on this one. A collaborative game with Jayisgames.com called Casually Killed. A point-and-click game where you have to investigate a mansion to solve a murder case. Comes with quirky characters and many tributes to casual games out there!



This ain't your typical Sunday Drive! No Straight Roads is the latest arcade shooter we're working on, and due this coming Thursday for the MSC IP Creator's Challenge. Together with Nyin, Yean, Aidi, Daim and Adrian, you know it's gonna be a blast! Am gonna lose sleep these few days for this game!



And finally, a game that I can't reveal much. Basically it's a casual MMOG that features mechanics for cooperation and lesser time commitments. This is the main reason why the New York publisher contacted me. Will be working on its pitch document the whole of next month.

And there you have it! Now you know why I'm busy right? Juggling all this with my lecturing job... wooohooooo. So I won't be blogging till earliest this weekend, if I can survive, that is.

Also in GameAxis Magazine!

Woohoo, featured twice in a month!

The team has been featured in The Star, and now we're also in GameAxis magazine June edition. Super thanks to sub-editor Lim Kuan Keat for writing an awesome three-page spread!







You know what the title reminds me of? Nacho Libre. "Take it eeeeaaaaaasssssyyyyy", with the signature Jack Black teeth-grit lips.

I just realized that I have such a fake smile in the photos =_= I'm so not photogenic. The whole team looks good though. It even has Dzaid's progressive fairy drawings, Daim's character designs and Aidi's ship designs as part of the layout. Speaking of which, Daim, wish you were in these photos too :(

And the last page even features the designs for the upcoming two games: a detective point-and-click game, designed by Chen Li (*ahem* where are my room drawings?! keke...); and a match-3 puzzle game, designed by my two great sisters Nyin and Yean.

I blurred out the text to encourage you to buy the mag, of course! It's only 7 bucks, and it's packed with glossy colorful goodness, rich with features, game reviews and coverage of the local scene. Go get it!

Featured in The Star!

Away with the bad news, and on to some good news!

My team and I were featured in The Star In-Tech section today! My god, was I so shocked to see my big, hideous face across the whole section cover.





Sorry ah, my scanner quite small!

Thanks to Madhavan for the awesome article, very well-written! And also thanks to my close buddies Nyin, Yean, Aidi and Dzaid for making it to the photography session. Wish you were in there too, Daim :(

Full story available online @ The Star Online (click here).

You can pre-arrange an autograph session with the team, but only if our busy schedule allows ;) Book early!

Of videogames and interviews

First off, big congrats to (if )interactive for winning the Webby People's Voice awards! The win goes to Discovery Channel's I, Videogame project, an edutainment website that talks about videogames for the past 4 decades. Just for your info, the Webby Awards is a leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet (ripped off from the website :D).

I'm proud to say that I was part of the (if )interactive team working on that project! Man, so nostalgic, the times when I was in (if ).

*sob* Anyway, here are the links to the announcement and the actual site:
Webby: http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=12
I, Videogame: http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/ivideogame/



On an unrelated note, I was interviewed by Tim W of the Indiegames blog. Tim had Jay of Jayisgames to publish it on his site. Click here to read the interview.

Tim has a great story to tell as well. He was a programmer for 10 years or so, got tired of it and opened his own setup. The people at San Francisco noticed his great skill in journalism and had him to be the editor and writer of the Indiegames blog. And guess what? We met through the Internet and all, and he just lives near my house! Can't believe I'm living near an international blog superstar. XD

Anyway, thanks Tim! Next time, two Frappuccinos, my treat!

Kakireka Talk

I'll be giving my 2nd talk for the Kakireka event this Friday (May 9). I'll be showcasing a behind-the-scenes look at Ballistic Wars and The Last Canopy. For those who have already attended the IGDA talk, don't bother, coz I'll be using the same slides (shhh don't tell them). Of course, it'll be a little more centric to the art community.

It's in Ole Cafe @ Changkat Bukit Bintang (the inner road besides the corner KFC across BB Plaza). Everyone's invited, of course. It starts at 8 pm, but I'll be late as usual... just kidding, Kenneth! Really, I'm kidding!

Here's the link (look at the sidebar there for the Ole Cafe map):

http://kakireka.blogspot.com/2008/05/smalltalk-09-may-2008.html

See you there!

A Cup of 3-in-1 Goodness

It's been a while eh? A little girl told me that I should put three great posts into one; her name is Sheerlay Z. Ness.

(EDIT: Sidebar updated to reflect my latest anime and games!)

Seeds now online!



The Last Canopy had some great enemy ship designs eh? Well the artist not only can draw stuff, he can write as well!

My cousin Aidi has just released the first part of his very first novel online, titled Seeds. My simple mind could only process 5 pages of words without looking at a single graphic, but I read his novel up to the 9th page last night. That had to account for something!

So far, I like the story. Though the prologue held a lot of historical events, the first chapter captured my attention, with a girl being fascinated with a simple dandelion. Go ahead everyone, give it a read. Click here to read Aidi G.V.'s post, then download the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Seeds.

Easy Only! Games official website now online!



FINALLY! When you're so busy with games and lectures, how do you find time for your own webbie right? We now have a cutesy animated website for Easy Only! Games, and the designer is none other than the great Leenyin (thanks mui!).

Sounds and more sections are on the to-do list, but meanwhile please visit the site and lemme know what you think @ http://www.easyonlygames.com!

The Informal IGDA Meetup



This was the 2nd slide of my presentation. I was invited to give a talk and showcase Ballistic Wars and The Last Canopy at a recent meetup by the International Game Design Association Malaysia Chapter. Met a bunch of great people there. A few young'uns told me that they were inspired by my initiative, I was so very touched. Buzz was great too, and his game Vyrus even more so. Can't wait to play the game!

Click here to find out more about the meetup. A phrase there might draw your attention: "...Hazmer was late,..." Bangsar was jammed, honest! _orz

Thanks for playing The Last Canopy!

Here's a little picture tribute to all those who have played and supported The Last Canopy:



My cousin Dzaid on the left was the illustrator and background designer for the game, also the character designer of the fairy. My cousin Aidi on the right was the enemy ship designer. Three of us would like to thank everyone for supporting The Last Canopy, and hope that you continue your support with the various versions of TLC in the future!

I also sent a thank you email to Jayisgames, and they were so touched that they published it on the site! A little deja vu, eh? :) Here's the link:

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/04/a_message_from_easy_only_games.php

My next game involves a collaboration with my two sisters, Nyin and Yean, and it involves pizza! Sounds yummy doesn't it? :9

JayisGames Review of The Last Canopy

"A good shoot'em-up is like a symphony. The enemies are the musicians, the bullets the notes. And the player is the soloist at center stage, riffing a melody over the chaos, flirting with death, performing miracles. Wan Hazmer is the conductor, who must have a deep understanding of the rhythms that bind everything together.

And The Last Canopy is just awesome."

Click here to read the rest of JayisGames' awesome review!

Penny Arcade praises Ballistic Wars!

In a rather surprising turn of events, Kunal Joshi of the Jayisgames community mentioned about Penny Arcade speaking highly of Ballistic Wars! Yes, it's THAT Penny Arcade, the super popular video game web comic.

Here's the original article: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/02/25/

The article was published a month back though, and I didn't know anything about it!

Yea the guy has a point, how come I didn't propose it to be retailed instead? Now I'm quite motivated to come up with the actual proposal. Its sequel (!) is gonna come out soon, so watch out for it.

If you dunno anything about Ballistic Wars, it was the first official creation I made under my company Easy Only! Games, together with Daim and Nyin. You can still play the game! Click here to hit some balls.

If you are into video games and you dunno Penny Arcade, shame on you.

The First Canopy!!

Oh wow, I'm still in a huge state of disbelief :o

Was very anxious about the result last night, so I didn't sleep well at all! Then at 12 noon today, the voting closed and the page refreshing began! *refresh* *refresh* Keep refreshing for 3 whole hours! No announcements =_= Then I gave up, and went to the Registry Office to get my birth cert. Then Dzaid texted me...

"Have you seen it?"

Man, my heart skipped a beat! I called him and he told me the great news :D

I still can't believe it, but yes, The Last Canopy won FIRST PLACE in the Jayis Game Design Competition #5! Thanks to your votes, it has also won the audience award for having the highest amount of votes! w00t!!! \^o^/

Here's the competition result page: http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/04/cgdc5_results.php

The game would be nothing without all of you playing the game, so really big thanks for enjoying the game. And super duper thanks to those who voted! The donation shall be used to buy a PS3 create more games in the future!

In fact, three games are already in the pipeline. To give you some hints, the games will be about pizza, knight rider and wayang kulit! Keywords, keywords...

Of course, without my cousins, The Last Canopy would be about a box shooting a bunch of boxes, and that would be so uncool. Aidi, Dzaid - this is our win!!!

EDIT: Whoa, looks like we're not the only ones celebrating!



Out of 1,300 or more fan submissions, only 163 were chosen to be included in Udon's Street Fighter Tribute Artwork, and Daim's artwork is one of them! I have seen him draw SF tributes since the beginning of time, so he truly deserves this honour.

Btw, Udon here is not only that noodle thingy k, they're the official comic artists licensed by Capcom! Congrats dude! A round of applause for Daim! You can check out his BLOG: http://www.daimation.com.

Go Spytech! (personal joke, feel free to ignore)

Can't Multitask? Play TLC!

Got this from NST today. Told you to play The Last Canopy more often...



Man, the competition results are gonna come out in around 12 hours time. I'm seriously too nervous... Wish us all the best!

(p.s. friends link list in the sidebar has been updated... finally!)

TLC reached 150,000 hits! Also Runner-up in Kongregate!And vote before the week ends!

(If you still haven't played the game yet, click the above banner.)

That's right! As reported via MochiAds (the advert before the game starts), The Last Canopy has reached 150k hits! I dunno if this is enough to win the Viral awards, but I'm so happy that so many people are playing the game!

Another great news is that The Last Canopy was the runner-up for the highest-rated Flash game of the week in Kongregate, and our team has a great jump-start prize money of 150 US dollars! You all should check out Kongregate, a whole bunch of awesome games there: http://www.kongregate.com

Thanks to everyone for playing the game, and super thanks to those who voted ;)

And with my powerful Google skills, I found several blogs/review sites talking about the game, among them are:

• All Cool Kids Kongregate Review (9 out of 10!)
• the2bears.com
• Kotaro269, a japanese game blog
• Flash Game na Hibi, another japanese game blog
• Games.blog.nl, a Netherlands game blog
  

And this is the final week before the results are announced. I can only hope for the best! And to those who have not played or voted the game yet, please do so before the week ends! The link again is: http://jayisgames.com/cgdc5/?gameID=5

Also for those of you who wants to advertise The Last Canopy on your blogs, you can use the following graphics. Thanks!!

Vote for The Last Canopy!

With Kamina voted for the Parliament seat, let's vote for the State seat!

Thanks to everyone for your feedback! They're mostly positive, so the team is really glad that we made this game :D Really appreciate your support and encouragement!

If you like our creation The Last Canopy, please vote for it! To assure genuine votes, each voter needs to donate a minimum of 1 US dollar via paypal/credit card. The money will go to our team, of course, to make better games in the future! :D

Votes are counted per head, not by amount of donation. But of course if you wanna donate more, please go ahead! (please please please please please...)

The link to the voting is the same as the game, which is:
http://jayisgames.com/cgdc5/?gameID=5

As requested by some of our interested supporters (yay!), here are instructions on how to vote with your paypal/credit card:

When you click on the link above, wait for the *FUPIAK!* gimme5games logo to disappear, as well as the other sponsors.



Then you will see a VOTE FOR THIS GAME button like the above pic. Click it, and you'll be brought to the Paypal page.



Key in the amount that you want to donate in the above textbox. The number 100 there is just an example, but SUPER encouraged! XD



Then click on the UPDATE TOTAL button. The amount window would then be minimized.



If you wanna use your credit card and you don't have a Paypal account, or you don't even know what that is, click on the Continue button near the bottom of the page. If you have a Paypal account, just log in using the login panel.



For those who don't have a paypal account, you will see the above page. Make sure you select Malaysia first, then wait for the form to refresh itself. Key in all your details, and click Agree and Continue button.

After that, I shall say THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!

Of course if you still haven't played the game, please do so and let us know what you think! Here's the link again: http://jayisgames.com/cgdc5/?gameID=5.

Results will be announced next Sunday (a week after this coming Sunday). So wish us all the best, and we hope that you continue to support our games!

The Last Canopy

I'll blog about Seven Force later (the answer to the previous puzzle!).

Before that, I have an important announcement to make. The Last Canopy, an entry for the Jayis Casual Game Design Competition #5, is finally finished!!! *faints*



*gets back up* I've always wanted to make a Flash shmup, so after considering the given "upgrade" competition theme, I knew it was the best genre to make.

In this game, you control a fairy that initially has lousy firepower, so you absorb the enemy's attack and use it on them! Comes in 4 difficulties, including the 99-lives mode, for those who are not familiar with the genre.

Really big thank you to Aidi and Dzaid for the superb work! For everyone's info, Aidi was the vehicle designer and Dzaid was the illustrator. Couldn't have done it without their tremendous effort. Amidst the super rush, Dzaid's email subjects have been a constant form of entertainment ("Cloud Strife City", "Fairy Bogard", "BG (backgrounds, not battlegrounds)", among others) XD

Also, thanks to Daim for earlier discussions on how to make the game great.

I'll be creating a website just for the game, meanwhile click the picture above or click here to play the game! Leave a comment, and send the link to your friends! Also try the other games while you're there.

Ok I need my sleep now, thank you. *faints*

Easy Only! Games (and a new blog!)

In case you haven't met me for a few months, it is time to unveil my plans for my future! I have created my own company: Easy Only! Games.

Some of you are already aware of my passion, which is to create games for the masses. And I don't mean just puzzle games, mind you! I always believed that even a hardcore MMORPG could be re-engineered to cater to the mainstream audience.

And that's how I came up with the name. Really easy only!

For now, the company creates games for advertising purposes. I would conceptualize your product/service and turn it into a game! Thanks to (if )interactive, I have just quite enough experience to do this. And hey, (if ) is now my client!

You might ask, what does the logo stand for? Well, if you blur your eyes a little, you would see the acronym for my company, EOG. But that's not really the point. It's meant to be just 3 generic circles which would represent whatever elements my game has. For example, if it were a UFO game, then the logo would be replaced with three UFOs. Easy only!

I just sketched the logo and its concept, but it took a great designer like Nyin to polish it up and make it look really awesome. Thanks sis!

I have already registered my company, opened a current account and created some nice fresh business cards. The website is still in the works but I have just opened the company blog.

Here's the link: http://www.easyonlygames.com/glog.

Just to let you know, the current look-and-feel of the blog is meant to match the corporate site, which is coming soon! Be sure to check the blog, and let me know what you think!