What is the next big game this fall?
Gem Mine of course! As Gem mine is the first major project to be released by Katey Bluel and myself, I'm going to go back to the beginning and tell the story of how it began. The origin may surprise you.
As part of the Digital Entertainment Technology (DET) degree at Abilene Christian University (ACU), one of the assignments was to learn about mobile application development. The assignment was to simply change three things... and Katey and I changed pretty much everything. But, the true origin of the game is from much earlier. Fall Sophmore year, I took an honors colloquium entitled "Based on the Book" where we analyzed source materials and adaptations and what an adaptation says about the adapter: what information did they see as important, what reasons where there for changing certain details, etc.
As part of the Digital Entertainment Technology (DET) degree at Abilene Christian University (ACU), one of the assignments was to learn about mobile application development. The assignment was to simply change three things... and Katey and I changed pretty much everything. But, the true origin of the game is from much earlier. Fall Sophmore year, I took an honors colloquium entitled "Based on the Book" where we analyzed source materials and adaptations and what an adaptation says about the adapter: what information did they see as important, what reasons where there for changing certain details, etc.
The final project for the class was to adapt something ourselves. I went back to some older stories and decided to try and adapt a fairy tale: Snow White to be precise. This was in no small part influenced by ABC's Once Upon A Time, but that's for another day. Anyways, I came up with the idea to make a mobile app game that drew elements from the original Snow White tale and proposed the first sketches as my final project. Then, DET was given sample code to edit for an assignment (that project mentioned earlier) and Katey and I ran with it. We came up with many different ideas to tie in the elements of Snow White, and we finally agreed upon focusing specifically on the seven dwarves. And so... Gem Mine was born. The Gem Mine as it is today is a very different version than what we started with. As our major project that Spring semester, Katey and I developed Gem Mine into what it is now. We have been able to flesh out five distinct levels of difficulty, each more treacherous than the last, and have a few surprises in store for our players. We've had some bumps and derailments from time to time, but all in all, its been an exciting project to work on, and the game just draws the player in to get just a few more points to keep beating their past scores.
Until next time...
"Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"
-The Evil Queen (Disney)
"Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"
-The Evil Queen (Disney)