I won’t say too much right now, since the Winter (work-in-progress) Show is coming up on December 3, but here’s a quick update:

• We’ve changed the name of the project to Leafcutters.
• As the player, you give suggestions to ants which influence how they act in various situations. You can teach a whole colony how to operate with relative ease.
• The game is as true as possible to current myrmecological knowledge.

Alright, that’s all for now. I hope to see you all on the 3rd!

Bill

Play In Browser
Download for Mac
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After a few years of returning to our roots and admitting that there was magic in the gaming past which has become very rare, I think it’s natural to feel a little sick of that strictly retro fare, and now we ought to go pretty crazy trying to discover veins of that magic with new designs.

This post was going to be longer originally, but I think it’s done. :)

Spectre is a 2010 IGF Student Showcase winner!  Great work, everyone!

Suits is a Facebook strategy game in which each player is a middle manager for a classic Bond-movie-style evil organization. As a team of managers, you work together to complete a nefarious plot to take over the world, while also stabbing each other in the back in order gain favor over your peers in the organization.

Players conspire to send henchmen on missions throughout the world, with the ultimate goal of placing a deadly laser on the moon while earning the most kudos points with the Boss. Remember, it doesn’t matter who does the work, as long as you get the credit.

A combination of shared and personal mission goals leads to complex strategies. Will you be a team player or a backstabber?

I worked with Sean Bouchard to design the game system for Suits. It was a challenging and intriguing problem to design a game which is simultaneously cooperative and competitive, allows for asynchronous play, doesn’t penalize the team for individual inaction, and provides an engaging level of strategy while remaining accessible as a Facebook title.

The world map, and your henchmen.

Send your henchmen on nefarious missions.

Suits
2010
Facebook Game
My Title: Game Designer, Producer
Team:
• Lead Designer: Sean Bouchard
• Game Design: Sean Bouchard, Bill Graner
• Producer: Bill Graner
• Software Development: Joey Kohn, Kevin Lee, Rhett Farney,
Brian Valdillez, Josh Martin, Patrick Monroe, Elliot Lee

Game Website: www.spectregame.com

On a quiet winter night, Joseph Wheeler stares up into the snow and tries to recall the nine moments that shaped his 73 years of life. Travel through Joseph Wheeler’s memory and relive those nine moments, choosing how his life will be remembered.

Game description and images courtesy of www.spectregame.com.

Spectre is a recombinant narrative platformer, a game that tells the story of an individual’s life. The landscape before you is not a physical world, but 73 years’ worth of Joseph’s memory: moments of joy and fear, light and darkness. As you navigate through his specific recollections, similarly themed events will glow bright. If you succeed in these moments of play and follow a glowing path, you will find a theme uniting his experience, and uncover a little more of his fading memory. If not, your nightly story will end in confusion.

With over a hundred memories linked to fifty-two different ending themes, there are many possible narratives to discover in Spectre. Each session of play represents one fifteen-minute summary of Joseph Wheeler’s past, one piece of a life-long puzzle. Different stories will highlight different facets of his experience and personality, leaving the player with a compelling, if never entirely complete, impression of the man, his place in the world, and what he sees when he stares upwards into the endlessly falling snow.

Encountering the memories of childhood

As the sound designer for Spectre, I created all sound and music for the game, with the notable exception of the theme song/overworld music, which was composed by Jamie Antonisse. I worked closely with Jamie and the artists to develop the unique atmosphere of each minigame vignette. I also directed, recorded, and mixed the voiceover for the game. Spectre was my first sound design project, and I relied on skills I’d acquired as a filmmaker and game designer creating audio for my own projects.

Lost in a book

Spectre
www.spectregame.com
2009
Flash Game
My Title: Sound Designer
Tools Used: Garageband, Pro Tools, Flash, Quicktime Pro
Team: Vaguely Spectacular
Download for PC and Mac

W, A, S, D to move. Q and E to fly up and down. Up and Down arrow keys to deform the landscape near you.

Try making some white peaks and some green grass!

Download for Windows
Download for Mac

-Bill

I like to think that my work as audio designer helped to tip us into the “honorable” distinction. ;)

Spectre project page

www.spectregame.com

-Bill