Acetio | Blogma

Candy Hop is my new game, published via Kongregate.

The theme is you are in a candy store, trying to fill your box of candy by bouncing each piece in, collecting chocolate hearts along the way. There are two modes: Action, which has a timed release of candy and encourages the player to react to the falling candy, similar to the classic Breakout; and Puzzle, which has no timer and is more similar to those games where you have to create a wacky device (eg. Color Infection). There is a high scores table on Kongregate. It's satisfying to see the high scores, since it means people are playing it all the way through, not giving up after a few levels.

The game idea is from Jig Easy, Sam, a contest entry for the JayIsGames 4th Casual Game Design Competition that I worked on with Joe Versoza, which itself was first inspired by a "toy" I submitted to Carnegie Mellon's Experimental Gameplay Project called Bagatelle.

The idea was to have a modifiable pinball machine, the key component being bumpers that accelerated the ball, as opposed to simple pegs as you would find in a pachinko game.

The Valentine's Day theme was a bit forced, but gave some guidance in terms of design choices. If this does well I may create sequels for other holidays (shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, eggs for Easter, etc.), but the ultimate implementation of the idea will probably be a kind of virtual foosball I have envisioned.

The initial title of the game was "Be My Rubber Valentine", which I thought would catch people's attention - but it turned out to be an inappropriate choice, simply because it would be more likely to turn off the potential audience who would probably enjoy the game.

Candy Hop is my new game, published via Kongregate.

The theme is you are in a candy store, trying to fill your box of candy by bouncing each piece in, collecting chocolate hearts along the way. There are two modes: Action, which has a timed release of candy and encourages the player to react to the falling candy, similar to the classic Breakout; and Puzzle, which has no timer and is more similar to those games where you have to create a wacky device (eg. Color Infection). There is a high scores table on Kongregate. It's satisfying to see the high scores, since it means people are playing it all the way through, not giving up after a few levels.

The game idea is from Jig Easy, Sam, a contest entry for the JayIsGames 4th Casual Game Design Competition that I worked on with Joe Versoza, which itself was first inspired by a "toy" I submitted to Carnegie Mellon's Experimental Gameplay Project called Bagatelle.

The idea was to have a modifiable pinball machine, the key component being bumpers that accelerated the ball, as opposed to simple pegs as you would find in a pachinko game.

The Valentine's Day theme was a bit forced, but gave some guidance in terms of design choices. If this does well I may create sequels for other holidays (shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, eggs for Easter, etc.), but the ultimate implementation of the idea will probably be a kind of virtual foosball I have envisioned.

The initial title of the game was "Be My Rubber Valentine", which I thought would catch people's attention - but it turned out to be an inappropriate choice, simply because it would be more likely to turn off the potential audience who would probably enjoy the game.

"Open Porch Bowl "