Fall 2011 - Film 3710 (Game Development I)

This class was an introduction to the whole development cycle of game development. Starting with the IDEO design process (Umbrella Team), one page game pitches, prototyping, getting to the fun fast, having beta testers, and eventually locking all code and art content for a final mobile game product.

The class broke up into 3-4 teams and had to come up with three different game pitches based around a theme / category. I ended up being the lead programmer on the "Balloon Cargo" team.

Our first game pitch was a side scrolling, horizontal scrolling game where you would control a hot air balloon through different levels, avoid obstacles, picking up cargo, and landing on a platform to end the level.



Our second pitch was a water balloon toss game. You would play as a kid behind a fence tossing water balloons at people, cars, anything that you wanted. Whenever you hit something it would drop something (cargo), and you would collect them to earn higher scores.



Our third pitch was a puzzle / sorting game. You played as a balloon factory worker that had to sort balloons into the correct baskets. Obstacles would be in the way causing the balloons to pop, or be blown off in the wrong direction.



This ended up being the game that we made. The game had 5 themed worlds (City, Cave, Haunted House, Factory, and Forest). Each world had 6 levels that increased in difficulty. The game had a star scoring system similar to Angry Birds.

At the end of the semester we were the only team that successfully had our final product working on a mobile platform.



Some more screenshots can be found here.

Balloon Cargo


To see some of the production process check out these two blogs:
Balloon Cargo Blog
Thaddeus Beck Film 3710