Welcome to the Street! This will be a real running of the bulls. Get ready to trade stocks and rip-off your colleagues in this game of inside information around Wall Street.

Set-up: send an SMS to insider.yo@jumpword.com with the word “join” in the message.

(more…)

Shopmania is an inlay game we created at Gamelab for the publisher iWin. The player takes on the role Lewis a harried shopclerk working at the superstore $pendmoore. The game combines tongue-in-cheek satire with an addictive action puzzle game. I worked with Eric Zimmerman on general game design issues. I designed the second mode of play for the game, “Overtime.” This mode combines a sim with an action puzzle. Players earn money they can use to upgrade and design their own store.

The challenge was to create a set of different waves that would feel different on each play, yet have predictable difficulty arc. At the same time I hat to account for the different upgrades the player might buy. It was essential to not make the progression feel didactic, like a puzzle with only one right answer. Instead I wanted to give the player the feeling of an open-ended experience, full of interesting choices. This was important to make the player want to play through the level again and experiment with different upgrade combinations.

Download a copy at iWin. It’s fun. I promise.

From iWin’s description of Shopmania:

In SHOPMANIA, the customers keep on coming!

Welcome to your first day of work at the world’s largest department megastore — $pendmoore. You are Lewis, a retail clerk trying desperately to earn money to buy medicine for his sick hamster Gerry.

The $pendmoore motto is “WE do the thinking — so YOU don’t have to!” As every $pendmoore shopper comes into the store, it is your job to stuff their carts as full as possible before sending them out the door.

SHOPMANIA combines puzzle action with a heaping dose of frantic strategy. Manage the flow of customers as you fill up cart after cart, upgrading your department floor with retail goodies that make your job easier.

Can you keep up with the shoppers and make enough cash to finish the shift? Will your browbeating boss Mr. Willy give you a break? Will you ever save enough money to cure your sick hamster? Play SHOPMANIA and find out!

Another game we created for Playfirst at Gamelab. Plantasia offers a rather unusual casual game experience–a casual level-based sim. In each level, the player faces a new basic garden layout. The player must then pick the flowers they want to use, arrange them and keep them alive through the level as bugs and dryness threaten to undo your handiwork. Design for this was quite fun. With a robust level editor we could design interesting patterns and then provide access to specific flowers to offer different types of challenges. This allowed us to design levels with scripted elements for consistency, while also having some algorithmic elements that create a unique experience on each play.

I worked on the game design for this game with Nick Fortugno.

Download a copy at Playfirst.com

The Game

Paparazzi is a pervasive game in which you are on assignment for a hot tabloid rag. Your editor has given you a target and a series of assignments. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to snap pictures of your target in the assigned situations. Snap the most pictures and you win.

Goal

Snap pictures of your target in assigned situations. Snap the most pictures and you win.

Rules for the Pictures

1. Each player needs to catch his/her target person in the assigned actions and take a picture of her/him.
2. Pictures must be taken during gameplay. (No old pictures)
3. Person must be identifiable in the picture. (Gamemaster will settle disputes)

(more…)

A game of territory control using the forgotten payphones of New York City.

You and your teammates must dash across the blocks around Washington Square Park in a bid control as many payphones as possible. You simply make a call from a payphone to the game system and enter your team number to capture a phone. For each minute your team controls that phone the team scores one point. Grab more phones for more points.

Interested in playing? Visit PayphoneWarriors.com to sign up for games the Payphone Warriors mailing list.

(more…)