Altercation.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Good Authority (2016 unreleased prototype)

Hey, long time no see! We've been busy with our individual projects for the past few years, but we're finally trying to gear up our collaborations again.

This latest collaboration is "Good Authority", a game about Robert Moses' career and influence on urban planning in New York City. We spent a month or two building a prototype for Tim Hwang's Power Broker game competition.

The prototype taught us a lot about what worked and what didn't work. At the moment, the building portions and the driving portions are too separate and fragmented, and it's a little bit too realistic with the amount of workload and busywork that Robert Moses subjected himself to! So, we're redesigning the game a lot, and now we're looking at an early 2017 release.

More images and game info are available here: https://radiatoryang.itch.io/goodauthority

If you're interested, you can follow us on Twitter or you can sign-up for our low-traffic rare infrequent e-mail newsletter for the game. Thanks for your interest!

Monday, February 6, 2012

Jersey Shouroboros (Global Game Jam 2012)

Made within 48 hours. At our Global Game Jam site (NYU Game Center), we were nominated for "Best Use of Theme" and "Best Overall," and ended up winning the "Audience Choice" award. Woohoo!

VERSION 1.1
> PLAY IT NOW: Unity Web Player build.

"Jersey Shouroboros" is a hastily built critique of the never-ending cycle of self-destruction depicted on reality television. You play as Jörmungandr, a mid-level producer on Jersey Shore who also happens to be an infinitely long serpent god. Devour the cast, then bite your tail to lock them into a perpetual cycle of gym, tanning, and laundry.

Best played with a PS3 controller on OSX, or a X360 gamepad on Windows. (You can also use your keyboard, but it doesn't feel nearly as good.)
Three (3) action-packed levels, featuring your favorite Jersey Shore stars, as well as additional fictional cast members like "Person" to expand the Shouroverse.

Dinner Secrets

A week ago, me and Eddie participated in a game jam in New York City, hosted by Babycastles / Parsons AMT. After they revealed the secret theme ("@horse_ebooks") we had to concept, design, and build a complete game in less than 48 hours. We chose the "dinner secrets" tweet, we really wanted to work with Kinect, and for some reason the 1980s TV show "Happy Days" was really on our minds.

The Kinect player controls Fonzie, who must hide the fact that he has abused a high quantity of horse tranquilizers and is as high as a kite. (That's the "secret!") During the game, Mr. Cunningham will then ask Fonzie to pass across a variety of tasty and ludicrous dinner dishes -- "Fonzie, could you pass me the Michael Jackson?" -- and so the player must contort their body to pass the item over. A second player acts as Richie Cunningham, a floating head controlled by mouse, to help retrieve items for Fonzie.

Super Cult Tycoon 2: Deluxe Edition

Our entry in Super Friendship Club's "Mysticism" pageant!

NEW! VERSION 1.0
> PLAY IT NOW: Unity Web Player (3.5 mb)
> DOWNLOAD IT: Windows (11.5 mb) | OSX (10 mb, Intel only)

Control your very own cult in Colorado; brew Kool Aid, sew wallets, build PR agencies, summon amorphous capture spheres, construct monoliths and ward off those pesky FBI agents -- then run off with the money.

At it's core, it's a rather lightweight tower defense / tycoon game.

We also wanted to play with the idea of RTS buildings as narrative tools. The crazy assortment of buildings serves to characterize your cult, an amalgation of real-life cults, the Blisstonians in that one episode of the Simpsons, the cult in Strangers with Candy, and many others. There was also some light research done into how these cults percieve themselves -- to them, the word "cult" is a slur used by established organized religions to marginalize their personal practice of religious freedoms. We tried to incorporate that argument into the game as well, though of course, the silliness trumps everything.

PRESS: