Ibology is going to Mars!

Or at least, Ibology is making a game about Mars. "The Martian Frontier" is a cooperative survival strategy game specifically designed and created for the upcoming live event, "Patriots Solar System Competition".

One or two players control four Martian colonists as they try to keep their habitat in good working order. This is accomplished by growing food, performing routine maintenance, mining ice and minerals, and even doing things like eating and sleeping, which are still very important to us living beings...

Here we are getting ready to start the second training session for the game.

The actual event will take place at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, April 14th at 5:30pm. The competition will be between 5 teams of 3-5 students. Each team will present a research paper and project, in addition to being scored at their performance of "The Martian Frontier", which is based on real and relevant science!

The most recent video, now over a month old, shows basic gameplay.

XenoBloom 1.3 Released

XenoBloom 1.3 features local Co-Op (originally conceived so I could play with my daughter), and "selective evolution", which means that you get to choose what evolves next!

More updates are planned for this unique meditative puzzle experience.

And speaking of "evolution", I've been working on another concept for an environmental simulation, based on the concurrent evolution of both plants and animals, using procedural generation. It has no name yet, but I can show some pictures from the early stages of prototyping.

The initial "bug" is constructed of various parts mixed and matched from files. The evolution shown here is purely physical, and is done simply by duplicating either vertical or horizontal segments of the original creature. In the future, the player will be able to influence the evolution of their bugs.

In the simulation I am planning, each bug would also have many other traits, such as what kind of food it eats, how fast it moves, how quickly it reproduces, and what sort of defenses it has against predators.

7DRL 2016

For Seven Day Roguelike (7DRL) 2016, I created "Star Squadron Commander", a tactical space combat simulation based on a "rock-paper-scissors" interaction between the different types of ships.

It is not very rogue-like at all, but I really just wanted to prototype this mechanic, and see how viable it is for a more involved strategy game. I completed the game in far less than the available 168 hours, and it is complete with graphics, sound, in-game instructions, and even AI vs. AI matches! You can download it for free here.

Finally, I will be teaching some game design workshops at Bowie State University at an upcoming event April 30th, along with Melanie Stegman of Molecular Jig games, and Jesse Ozog, who you may know as "Smash Riot", and many other names in the greater DC area.

As often happens, at first I don't know what to talk about, and then suddenly I've got five times as many subjects as I need.

Well, I'm keeping busy...

Thanks for reading,

Bob