Taro Omiya

Taro Omiya

Software Engineer, Game Designer

  • Weekly Game Music: Annul (Neotokyo)

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    New week, new music, and what better way to start than a weird music that mixes futuristic sounds in a spaghetti-western composition? I’m talking about Annul, by Ed Harrison. It’s used in a Japanese-themed Half-Life 2 mod, Neotokyo. It’s an action-filled, yet melancholy music of the ever-growing conflict between the government military and the terrorists.

    Since Neotokyo is a Half-Life 2 mod, it is currently only playable on the Mac and on the PC. The mod can be downloaded here.

    The story for Neotokyo, like Team Fortress 2 is merely used to explain the settings and missions. An extremely nationalistic group attempts to take the Japanese government for themselves when an amendment to the constitution doesn’t come through. Fortunately for the country, the government successfully foils the group’s actions, but at a price of scattered terrorists roaming in the streets. Neotokyo sets the stage for these terrorists fighting against the government law enforcers.

    Like Team Fortress 2, Neotokyo is an online multiplayer first-person shooter. The main draw are the “capture the flag” missions, where the object to capture is the Ghost. When the player carries the Ghost, he or she becomes capable of seeing opponents coming from behind the walls. In exchange, the player is unable to fight back, and must flee back to his or her base as fast as possible. Neotokyo also takes cues from theMetroid Prime series, where different classes have different visors to visually detect invisible opponents. Every class, of course, have their own camouflage suits. Lastly, the mod is reveled for its art direction and graphics. Asian cities aren’t a common sight in video games, after all.

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  • Strange Free Games: Iji

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    Here’s a game that’s not too hard to describe. Imagine Gears of War as a 2D platform shooter, but with the “your enemies are human, too” theme much more heavily emphasized. Imagine, instead of burly men trash talking, you lead a lost super-soldier girl who’s only option is taking orders. And imagine a game, made by one guy, in GameMaker, that’s actually good. Imagine the impossible, and you get Iji.

    Iji is downloadable on Daniel Remar’s website.

    Iji‘s story starts simple. Iji and her family happened to venture Iji’s brother, Dan’s, science laboratory, when suddenly, the aliens invades earth. Knocked unconscious, Iji wakes up years later as a super-soldier created by Dan. Infused with the invader’s technology, and thus, being able to understand the alien language, Iji attempts to negotiate with the invaders for peace by Dan’s orders. Things become complicated, however, when you start deciphering the many alien accounts in regards to your possibly violent actions.

    As mentioned earlier, Iji plays like Gears of War in 2D. Iji can duck under cover to avoid enemy fire, while shooting, jumping, kicking and even hacking enemies to submission. Unlike Gears of War, Iji also contains a lot of RPG elements, where you can upgrade your character’s various traits. The game even contains a healthy number of guns that you can fuse together to make a more powerful beast. Finally, Iji has multiple endings, encouraging a lot of replay.
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  • Weekly Game Music: The Village Green (zOMG)

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    Next up in my library of game music: Gaia Online. Yup I’m talking about that game-centric online community. I can only expect a lot of flaming between opinionated internet users, but first, lets put our differences behind and enjoy the music. It’s so good, even I took interest in the game it came from, zOMG, despite its ridiculous name. Here’s The Village Green, by Jeremy Soule.

    zOMG is playable online, and even better, doesn’t require registration to get a good demo out of it.

    zOMG is a flash-based MMORPG, intended to be smoothly integrated to the Gaia Online website. As such, your avatar’s gender, clothes, and accessories carry over to this stylized world. zOMG starts with you just getting off the train into the Village Greens. Quite immediately, you learn that all the inanimate objects have come to life…for the worst. It’s up to you to find what’s behind this mystery.

    Like most MMORPGs, zOMG doesn’t have a strong focus in story, and certain quests end up conflicting in details (though it’s clear several of them are lies). Similarly, the combat is the basic point-and-click-to-attack fare. Unlike most MMORPGs, however, there are no weapons, armor, or heck, even a level-up system. Instead, you collect special rings that provides you different power and abilities. This includes swords, guns, magic, stat-boosts, etc. Furthermore, the combined stats determines what level you’re at.
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  • Coming Up With a Game in Global Game Jam

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    In Global Game Jam 2012, I came up with…12, no 13 different game ideas.

    Yeah, I had a lot of ideas. But how? Coming up with a game idea in a short time might seem difficult at first. But believe it or not, it isn’t: understanding the context of the situation, and letting your gut reaction go wild generates a whole slew of creative game ideas.

    The Perspective
    In Global Game Jam, you have to recognize the scope and effort your team can put in in 48 hours. That’s a very short time with very little people. Even worse, you’re dealing with a lot of competitors, so to get the attention of the crowd, you want your game to be easy and immediately accessible.

    Therefore, your game must be simple, small, and short. It shouldn’t take more than a minute to explain how to play the game. If you can finish the game within five minutes, you can present everything in a timely manner. And if it’s small, that means less time necessary to play-test and squash bugs. Despite the general urgency budding game designers have to create an epic, a Wii Sports angle for Global Game Jam will garner more attention and more points.

    The Idea
    Now that we have the context out of the way, which ideas tend to succeed more at generating an actual game?

    One word: gameplay. Yes, the sooner you establish how to play the game, the better. It’s important to stress how much easier it is to come up with a gameplay first, then create a story and artworks for the game later, than it is the other way around.

    As an example, here at the George Mason University this year, we were given an hour to come up and present a game idea.  There were many people who admitted that their ideas were merely gameplay looking for a game. You guys were doing it right. On the other hand, there was a team in Universities at Shady Grove last year who tried to come up with the story of the game first.  They struggled to write anything on paper for nearly 3 hours.  Clearly, they were doing it wrong.

    Frequently, a team will change its mind about the artwork, the story, and even the end goal halfway through development. This is fine, and in fact, encouraged. You should keep an open mind about how you want to present your game. But you still want to retain the backbone of your game: the gameplay.

    The Theme
    When the theme is presented, I see many people attempt to analyze and evaluate what the heck the theme means.

    Stop right there. You only have 48 hours. Don’t waste the first hour determining what the heck the theme is, especially when your event coordinator is nice enough to reserve this brainstorming session for you.

    Instead, let your guts handle this. Whatever your first impression was when you saw that theme, write it down. Or if you’re talented enough, draw a picture. The latter is much more favorable.

    Now look up. What’s your second impression? Does it remind you of another game? Write it down.

    Look again. Does it remind you of a song, a book, or a movie? Write it down.

    Keep at this. It doesn’t matter how much you dislike the idea; it matters that you have any. After all, you want to keep your games simple, small, and short. Your impulse reactions are good at that. Your logical mind, on the other hand, isn’t. Don’t worry about the details. Gameplay first; presentation later.

    Putting it Into Practice
    So what were the ideas that I came up with? What were my impulses?

    This year’s theme was an image of an Ouroboros. Thanks to Harry Potter, I knew the image meant the cyclical nature of things, and my immediate reaction was, “Awesome! I can use that idea that was nagging in my mind during the hour-long drive to this college campus!” This eventually became our game, Susie’s Summer Home.

    OK, I admit, that was cheating. But I did have more.

    Second, I notice the circular shape the snake was making. My mind went immediately to gears, and I wrote down, “something to do with gears.”

    Looked back up again. I noticed the head was at the bottom. It made the picture feel heavier at the bottom than at the top. I wrote down, “gears with gravity: the bottom of the gear is heavier than the top.”

    Up again. I see three colors in this photo. I wrote down, “graphics: white, gray, and black.”

    Rinse and repeat. Snake eating tail. I wrote, “make the snake eat its tail. P.S. yes, everyone else must have thought of this!” I can’t emphasize enough to write down ideas, even if it isn’t original or unique. Maybe everybody else thought it was so obvious, they dismissed the idea. Just as likely, maybe nobody thought of it. It doesn’t hurt to take the risk

    I’m on a roll here! Lets see…that circular negative space is interesting! I wrote, “level where the character navigates the white space. See: Echochrome.”

    And so on and so forth.

    Last Words
    That’s how to do it, boys and girls! It doesn’t matter too much whether the game idea applies strongly to the theme or not. After all, the people will be judging by the end product, not by how much it relates to the theme. Instead, it’s most important to keep in mind that the game must be simple, small, and short. Also remember, that it’s easier to build game off of gameplay than the story, artwork, music, or even presentation.

    In both cases, your impulses are insanely good at those. Use it wisely!
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  • Strange Free Games: Every Day the Same Dream

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    The theme for this year’s Global Game Jam was an image of an Ouroboros — a snake eating it’s own tail. It’s supposed to be representative of how things in life are commonly cyclic, and as such, many games revolved around this theme. Of course, one short flash game has already beaten them to it: Every Day the Same Dream.

    Every Day the Same Dream is playable on Molleindustria’s website.

    Every Day the Same Dream is a mostly black & white game themed around the 80’s lifestyle. You play as a faceless, every-day businessman who repeats the same chore every day: wake up, go to work, deal with the traffic, and sit in your cubicle, clicking through things. It’s quite an extraordinary existential game, where everything is made to look bleak and terrible.

    But wait! There’s hope! The point of the game, as the Let’s Play video above demonstrates, is to break this cycle. The gameplay is so bleak, it demands that you push the boundaries, and break the rules of the game.
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  • Weekly Game Music: The Impact Site (Pikmin)

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    There’s a relatively lesser known Nintendo game called Pikmin. Everything about it should have been a blockbuster: Mario series creator and video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto designed the game. Nintendo themselves show-cased the game as a demonstration of their new console, Gamecube’s abilities to handle numerous characters and their AI. Some people argued this was the first game to get Real-Time Strategy right on a console. And yet…it fell through everyone’s radar. A shame, since the music in the game — such as The Impact Site, composed by Hajime Wakai — is wonderfully organic to match the wild-life nature of this game.

    Pikmin has a relatively simple plot. Captain Olimar, a space captain cruising through space on a vacation, collides into an asteroid, and gets marooned on to an unknown planet. Unfortunately for Olimar, this planet is treacherous. Every creature, including spiders, are large and vicious. Worse, the planet’s atmosphere is toxic to Olimar, and he must rely on the month-long air supply left on his ship. His only path of escaping this planet — retrieving every lost spaceship piece, and repairing his ship — seems like an impossible task. Yet, as Olimar hopelessly scavenges his immediate surrounding, he encounters a loyal plant-based humanoid creatures that he names, “Pikmin.” He finds breeding these species to create an army is rather easy, and uses them as forces to defeat enemies and gather his lost spaceship parts.

    Pikmin plays a lot like a Real-Time Strategy game. As Captain Olimar, you direct an army of Pikmins to handle different tasks, such as building bridges, fighting enemies, and carrying spaceship pieces. Olimar uses his whistle to gather Pikmins within a certain radius, and throws them to handle the selected tasks. Pikmins is breed by carrying dead enemies into their home-base, Onions. As there’s only a month of air supply available, your time in gathering all the spaceship pieces are limited.

    Pikmin was released on the Gamecube, and later, ported to the Wii. It’s dramatically improved sequel was only released on the Gamecube for the US.

    Extra!

    Title: The Forest Navel
    Game: Pikmin
    Composer: Hajime Wakai

    Title: 2P Battle
    Game: Pikmin 2
    Composer: Hajime Wakai


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