Taro Omiya

Taro Omiya

Software Engineer, Game Designer

  • Strange Free Games: Global Game Jam Edition

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    Alright, here’s a dump of all the games I ended up loving from the Global Game Jam 2012. Going in no particular order…

    Susie’s Summer Home

    Susie's Summer HomeYay, my game! It’s a maze where you play as Suzie, attempting to escape her haunted summer house. Best played with no preconception of the game.

    Largely inspired by Yume Nikki and Paper Mario. Seriously.

    You Again?

    You Again?Here’s a rather incomplete game that, despite seeming to have no ending, have an extremely promising gameplay. You Again? is a simple dodging game that changes music and graphics as you collect power-ups and collide into enemies. You Again? has an interesting transition: enemies makes you older, until you eventually die of old age. In the after-world, however, colliding into enemies reverses your age, therein allowing you to reincarnate again.

    It’s hard not to like the excellent graphical and musical effects this game played. Where it lacks in gameplay, this game excels in presentation.

    #Snake2

    #Snake2#Snake2 plays like a terrible Japanese advertisement, and it’s well worth your time to play it from start to finish.

    Tenderizer

    TenderizerTypically in a game, you want to stay alive. In Tenderizer, it’s better to be dead. An excellent, moody platformer about a lone soul who wants nothing more than peace. Yet, in this grainy black-and-white world, death is the only way.

    Eurydice

    EurydiceHere’s a call-out to my pals from IGDA DC: Eurydice is a game with absolutely no graphics, only sound.

    Wait, what?

    Yup, a game with no graphics. The entire game is narrated and played via audio, and you have to be careful in what choices you make. The narrator will provide the actions you can take, via a text-adventure fashion. It’ll confuse many new gamers, for sure, but the old text-based guys will feel right at home.

    Immaturity

    ImmaturityA strange game with a foreign gameplay. Immaturity is a puzzle game where your action is recorded as a ghost, and you use this to solve puzzles. It’s pretty short and uncomplicated, but as a prototype, it’s very promising.

    BIG HELL

    BIG HELLHere’s a strange HTML5 game that I personally wasn’t sure what’s going on myself. BIG HELL is a simple communication game where you talk to other characters, and learn about their story. Then…you become that person.

    I’m not sure if there’s an actual ending to this game. Still, its presentation and narrative are truly commendable.

    Ascent | Descent

    Ascent | DescentAnother call-out to my pals from IGDA Albany! What’s a game that’s programmed by you? Well, the Game of Life, of course! Ascent | Descent adds an extra twist where Game of Life are the blocks you have to use as stepping stones to your final destination.

    GPS: Gracius Princess Savior

    GPS: Gracius Princess SaviorOK, I couldn’t resist this sorta-strange, sorta-not game, since it’s very fun. Here’s GPS: Gracious Princess Savior from South Korea. It’s an adorable 2D puzzle game, where death is a necessity. An all-around adorable game.

    Day of our Lives

    Day of our LivesDay of our Lives is a strange visual novel, where your choices leads to a different conclusion at the end of the day. Game’s story is with little surprises: you wake up, go to high school, meet up with your girlfriend, and then the school explodes.

    And then you wake up. Then go to high school. Then meet up with your girlfriend. The school explodes.

    …then you wake up.

    An extremely intriguing story, with a rather disappointing ending. As they say, though, it’s the journey that counts, and this game certainly has one!

    Don’t be square aka “The revenge of the psychedelic boring boxes” aka “vice versa”

    D.B.S.Most people don’t like abstract art…unless it’s moving. Well, it’s a lucky day for you guys, because D.B.S. is most definitely a moving art. Granted, the gameplay is a little pointless: collect all the shape, and move on to the next level. Worse, the game loops itself, really deprecating the art factor. Despite this, it’s a visually pleasing game, and I definitely recommend giving it a spin.

    Past Life

    Past-LifePast-Life is another game where you have to die. Unlike the last few games, though, you trigger your own death, rather than succumb to it. It’s a very neat 2D puzzle game, where you can die only so many times.

    Trapped! In the Chamber of Eternal Darkness

    Trapped!And my favorite game from Global Game Jam 2012 is…Trapped!

    Seriously, awesome game all-around. A simple (if typical) gameplay with excellent music, artwork, and presentation. I’ve got no complaints on this game. Well done, team Miniboss of Brazil!

    Note: yes, I admit, this really doesn’t classify as a strange game, but I recommend it all the same.
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    Read more: Strange Free Games: Global Game Jam Edition

  • Weekly Game Music: like stars (CLANNAD)

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    A while ago, I’ve mentioned that one of my favorite parts about doing this series is that I discover games I’ve never played before. Here’s one of those games: CLANNAD, a visual novel that became an inspiration for many mangas and animes. One of its trance music, like stars by zts, is a sorrowful but hopeful tune that sets the tone for this tear-jerker game.

    CLANNAD is a slice-of-life story that chronicles the life of Tomoya Okazaki from high school to parenthood. Tomoya leads a inward, negative life in high school. His delinquent life can easily be connected to his terrible relationship with his father. Recently, Tomoya’s alcoholic and angry father accidentally dislocates his son’s shoulder, forcing Tomoya to quite his sports team. Likewise, his father becomes apologetic and distant, only worsening Tomoya’s life. Despite these misfortunes, Tomoya befriends the sickly and low esteem Nagisa Furukawa. Together, they attempt to start a drama club.

    CLANNAD is a visual novel where you converse with other characters. Like a choose-your-own-adventure, there are multiple choices that will lead to multiple different stories. Most interesting in this game are the dream sequences, where Tomoya dreams of being one of the only 2 living things in a barren, soulless world. Tomoya himself has no body in this world; instead, the other living thing, a girl, provides a body for him using a robot-like toy. The lights that appears here also mirrors those in the real-life sections. Once all of them are gathered, the true happy-ending is unlocked.

    CLANNAD was released on the PC, PS2, PSP, PS3, and the Xbox 360, in Japan only.
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    Read more: Weekly Game Music: like stars (CLANNAD)

  • Strange Free Games: Yume Nikki

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    By now, you’ve probably already heard that I went to Global Game Jam 2012 to make a strange horror game. It so happens to be that the game was inspired by another free, indie hit, Yume Nikki. Be warned: this game is not for the weak-hearted. It is a terribly bizarre, alien, and grotesque game that pushes the boundaries of human comprehension.

    Yume Nikki can be downloaded at its fan-page.

    I’ve actually mentioned Yume Nikki in one of the Weekly Game Music post. The story behind Yume Nikki is similar to Inception. Madotsuki, a psychotic, shut-in girl is unable to or unwilling to walk out of her apartment. She takes refuge, instead, in her dreams where she travels around her scary subconscious. You can’t talk to any characters, and there’s no real enemies to speak of: Yume Nikki isn’t a fun game. If you search hard, however, you’ll find plenty of experimental implementation of horror that will linger in your memory for a long while.
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    Read more: Strange Free Games: Yume Nikki

  • Added Solitaire Double-Deck HD and Susie’s Summer Home

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    Whoa, it’s been a while since I’ve made any changes to this website, aside from the blog. Anyways, I got two new games listed listed here:

    Solitaire Double-Deck HD, a dazzling on a classic.

    Susie’s Summer Home, a maze-like horror game.

    Read more: Added Solitaire Double-Deck HD and Susie’s Summer Home

  • About Boomshakalaka

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    Games-I-made-in-Global-Game-Jam ramble, part 2. In 2011, I just moved into Maryland. To get used to things, I decided to take a supporting role in a team, rather than work by myself. Our creation was Boomshakalaka, a bomb-dropping game controlled by dropping objects on the keyboard.

    The game is downloadable here.

    The theme this time was “extinction.” A seemingly deep topic. In fact, the five of us literally wrote out every dictionary definition of it, and attempted to outline every possible game idea on the whiteboard. This process was…excruciating. We sat there for 3 hours, just thinking. Since I’m a gameplay-over-graphics kind of guy, I finally proposed that they make a game that uses an entire keyboard. Each key can be hit only once within the game, thus acting as the primary resource of the game. We’ve finally decided on a tower-defense game where you detonated a grid of mines as the monsters approached your base.

    But like last time, this entire idea was thrown away. It was Ruben Brown, this time, that came up with the final game idea: drop whatever on the keyboard. This eventually evolved into a bomb-dropping game under his direction. I remember vehemently rejecting the idea, not because of it ruining my original game design; but rather, the physical harm the control scheme could do to the precious keyboard. Yeah, I’m a stickler for my computer. Regardless, Ruben assured that only his laptop would take the abuse.

    In the final runs, we started having merging errors working with Unity and Subversion. Sadly, the explosion effects all disappeared; none of the courses and assets got added in, and the only thing that compiled was the one level displayed in the web link above. It’s a bit sad, really, as we had tanks, jeeps, and mannequins models to completely destroy. Regardless, the game turned out to be a simple casual game that many not into intense gaming could enjoy. It’s simply the lack of content and special effects that really hindered us badly.
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    Read more: About Boomshakalaka

  • About Trip Trap

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    Since I’ll be going to Global Game Jam this week, I might as well ramble about the games I made there. First, back in 2010, I had an assignment where I had to prototype a game by myself. This is what it came out to be: Trip Trap.

    For info and source-code, check out the Trip Trap page. I’ve only successfully ran it on Linux. Download SDL, Ruby 1.9 and Rubygems (typically, Ruby 1.9 comes bundled with Rubygems) using your operating system’s package manager or installer. With Rubygems, install RubyGame (gem install rubygame). If by some miracle, the above procedure succeeds, run “ruby trip_trap.rb” in the folder the source was unzipped in.

    I have a funny story about this game. The theme was “deception,” so I had an idea like Left Arrow Moves Left where you’d fight words in a 2D Zelda game fashion. At the same time, I wanted to experiment with the scripting language, Ruby (excellent language, by the way; very intuitive).

    This wasn’t a good idea. At all. I attempted to learn and understand how to program with the RubyGame library, but that took up the entire first day of the event. I panicked. Eventually, I came upon a sample script that controlled a white block with floaty controls…and ended up copying-and-pasting it for all the game elements. Thus was born the prototype, Trip Trap: a game where you are chased by bees, and need to maneuver around traps in such a way that the chasing bees — unable to stop — will fly into it. The hit-detection, enemy behavior, and physics all had to be programmed by me alone.

    The gameplay turned out to be compelling…when it worked. I’ve made a lot of levels where the game seemed to have ended prematurely, but a few struck as well-rounded and action-packed. That was enough to convince me: last year, I finally got started on revamping this concept into a full-fledged game. I’ll be talking about it in the near-future, so keep your ears open for more news.

    Edit: You can make it work on Windows! It’s complicated, though. You need to install Ruby and DevKit first. Then install RubyGame.

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    Read more: About Trip Trap