Independent
Board Games
Bushwhacked
Originally inspired by the ancient Chinese game Go and its typical flow, I created a game where you captured points on the board placed similarly to the nine point handicap spots on the Go board. I wanted to make a game that was more and more visually pleasing as the game progressed. The first pass of the game was very similar to Go in that you place stones on a grid and capture something. As time progressed and more play testing occurred, the game evolved into something completely different in play. It is a very simple game to learn but after playing for a bit, you end up seeing really complex strategies emerge. If you would like to read a more in-depth analysis of my thought process while making the game, download the rules and skip to the end of the document for my postmortem.
The Dezhari Sisters
Dedicated to Michael Sandborn, a good friend and my inspiration to create The Dezhari Sisters board game. I will never forget that booming laughter.
The Dezhari Sisters was a short story that two of my friends had collaborated in creating, one of which was Mike Sandborn. He came to me and asked if I would be able to make a game based on the story they wrote and so I told him, “sure”. After reading through the story several times, there were a couple really interesting parts that I thought would have cool themes to work with. Mike had created the character portrait art for me to use for the character dashboards. The miniatures are from Reaper Miniatures.
The one I finally settled on was the part where the Dezhari Sisters come to an enchanted forest completely covered in ice. They were trying to release the spell of a neverending winter by defeating Lorelei, the evil presence who controlled the enchantment. I immediately came up with the idea of flipping tiles to simulate their efforts “thawing” the forest. Each side has a different goal: The Dezhari sisters want to thaw the forest while Lorelei and her minion want to kill the Dezhari sisters.
WIP: Time Travel
A time traveling board game, heavily inspired by the movie Primer, where each player takes control as a scientist involved in creating a time machine. They begin as friends but every trip to the past corrupts their intentions. Each scientist has various agendas that he must fulfill in order to win the game, typically by interacting with his past self to adjust the outcome.
This is a very challenging project in that it deals with time travel, which can very quickly become overly complicated and cumbersome. I’m in the process of trying to simplify the rules and systems while still maintaining the depth and feel of the game. The miniatures were created using Sculpey clay.
WIP: Nightstalker
Nightstalker is a new stealth based mech skirmish board game that I’m working on. Think Battleship except the ships move every turn. It’s constant back and forth, trying to find the enemy to land a shot before it disappears from view.
Levels
Dawn of War
Multiplayer map for Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. The instructions on how to install the map are contained within the zip file.
I created this map mostly an exercise to learn the tools. It took me about 7 hours to learn the DoW map editor and about 3 hours to create Frozen Alley. I wanted to create a 2v2 map with a lot of the focus in the middle for an all out battle.
N+
These are a few levels I created for the N+ PSP version. I quickly learned the editor and creates these levels in under a week’s time. All three of the levels are really challenging and if I had to do it over, I would have gone for simpler versions of each. The map on the far left is probably the most consistent with the N flow. The optical illusion and skull levels are pretty non traditional and don’t really allow the player to gain momentum, which is a huge part of N.
I’m currently learning Unreal 4 and will add map progress soon.