Porkerpillar Wins!

Porkerpillar has won 2nd place in an international game development competition!

The babies cheer wildly!

Judging
The "5 Button competition", held recently through December and January and run by Experimental Gameplay Project and 02L, tasked game developers to make a game that

• Uses only 5 buttons, and
• Is fun to play in a party setting with multiple people at once.

There were a total of 48 games entered into the contest with ideas ranging from controlling individual parts of a man swimming to finding out that a triangle really does love a square.

Games were judged initially before the show, with a contest team selecting a group of finalist games and runners-up.  The idea being that the finalists would be offered to be played at the party, and if there was time, more games from the runners-up would be shown as well. The games were judged in the following manner:

• 20% of the public voting
• 30% of the average of the STATTMEDIA crew's votes 
• 50% of the average of the blue ribbon jury votes: Pete Angstadt (EA, Havoc, Turtle-Sandbox), Thorsten Wiedemann (AMAZE festival)

Players standing on the custom buttons at the event. (Image by Pete Angstadt)

 The actual event was held in a super-hip, re-purposed swimming center-turned-art gallery (of course!)
 One of the jury members took pictures and wrote about the event here: http://experimentalgameplay.com/blog/2012/02/5-button-winners/

Gamers playing Porkerpillar. (Image by Pete Angstadt)

Winners
The first place winner was a game called Rakete which sounds really neat: each button (and thus player) controls a thruster on a spaceship and players try to guide the ship to a destination together. Here's some footage of the game being played.

The third player winner sounds neat as well, Re-evolution, which appears to be an interesting racing game (though I couldn't get it to work on my computer because of the keyboard ghosting issues).

Our game Porkerpillar asks players to help babies get back to their mom by riding a strange caterpillar+pig creature. I promise he's friendly! You can check out more screens of the game and play it here: Porkerpillar.

Here's some video as well:


The Future
Now that Porkerpillar was proven to be a crowd favorite we may act on some more ideas we had for expanding the game universe, including new, trippy environments, and more puzzly obstacles. Plus a real game platform on which to play it! Probably rhymes with "my tone" or "bye dad".

Porkerpillar

Help the BABIES get back to their MOM! Ride the Porkerpillar and gobble up the tasty treats, but watch out for trouble! 

Click for original-size

The Porkerpillar is sort of like a caterpillar crossed a pig. A very happy pig.

As the stork flies by, a baby falls from a rip in the cloth sack, waking the Porkerpillar. It's time to wave and undulate his body to move the precious baby around, helping them eat yummies but also dodge danger while making your way to his mom.

Donuts are good for you, right?

This project was specifically made for the Experimental Gameplay Project which tasked designers to make a game that only uses 5 buttons. Traditional console games use directional pads (which alone use 4 or more buttons) or analog sticks, plus other face buttons and triggers.

This contest was special in that the finalists would be shown in a public party setting, with 5 large, pressure-sensitive buttons used to control the chosen games. 

And the great news is, Porkerpillar is one of the finalists! The contest+party is being held this Friday, wish us luck!

And if you'd like to try the game out, here's the link. Be warned though, some PC keyboards will not properly allow all keys 1 through 5 to be held down at once, which compromises the experience considerably. (My desktop keyboard doesn't work with 5 keys at once, but my laptop pleasantly does, so it may in fact work for you.) Here's a handy test for your keyboard.

http://www.mommysbestgames.com/porkerpillar.html

Triple-baby mayhem!

There is only one level currently. We may pursue developing the game further for touch-devices. It was a fun, and different project to make, enjoy! And it was our first non-violent game--crazy!

Shoot 1UP Phonorama

Shoot 1UP for Windows Phone 7 is in it's final stages of testing at Microsoft (it's nearly finished with 'pre-certification'). It's getting close to release!

I recently finished up some art that will hopefully get used as panorama promotion on the phone. Enjoy!

That weird, green, dog-faced thing is a new mini-boss in the phone game. And the player ships in the lower left, firing the Plasma Auger up at the mini-boss are new to the phone as well. They can pivot in any direction!

Here are various resolutions for wallpaper usage:

Shoot 1UP Panorama 1600x1200

Shoot 1UP Panorama 1280x1024

Shoot 1UP Panorama 1152x864

Shoot 1UP Panorama 1024x768

Shoot 1UP Panorama 800x600

Get those touch-screen fingers limber, intense phalanx phun is coming soon!