Anthony Mattox Interaction Design + Digital Art

Title screen for Orbit, a flash, arcade style, adventure game in space. Click to play!

Orbit is an arcade style adventure game. Explore an abandoned field of space junk and collect enough fuel to find your way home. The game is currently a small segment of the final adventure. In it I focused on developing the basic gameplay and the tone through motion, scale, graphics, and sound. Put on some headphones and give it a try.

Screenshots of the game. Click to enlarge.

In many ways, Orbit is quite similar to my first game, Pulsus. It’s just more circles and particles. But, while I’m certainly still show’s the same style and interests, I’ve added a few things to my game design vocabulary here. The biggest thing I tried to add was narrative and character. Although the story and goals are vague, I wanted to bring people into the game more with a bit of setting. I also tried to develop a sense of scale to the world.

Any feedback on the game is very much appreciated. This prototype is likely going to be expanded into an iOS game, with help from the rest of the Friends of The Web.

Various illustrations of space junk for a new game. Click the image to enlarge.

I’m working on a flash prototype for my next game, which will probably end up on iOS. Moving on from Pulsus, I’m designing something with a little more narrative, scenery, and character, although it’s still pretty much just particles…

Here’s a jumble of various pieces of space junk I’m working on for the game. It’s a fun process of designing little vector rockets and spaceships and then tearing them apart. I’m aiming to release a first prototype this weekend.

After a few long months of development, Pulsus is finally available for the iPad. From my original flash prototype, Pulsus has grown in every way possible. It’s found a new home on a wonderful device, has fully redrawn graphics, a new soundtrack, improved physics, a much improved interface, and a suite of new objects and levels on the way. The game has been completely rebuilt from the ground up in native Objective C and C++.

Visit the new Pulsus page for more information and pretty screenshots. View Pulsus in the app store. And play the old flash game.

The app is initially only available for the iPad but will be coming to the rest of the iOS family later this summer.

Of course, there is always more to improve, but Pulsus for the iPad has come very close to my original expectations for the game, creating a simple, but complex world and an enveloping series of meditative puzzles

Some Technical Notes

Pulsus is built using Objective C, C++, and C, it get’s a little hazy to be honest. All audio was created using Ableton Live and Adobe Soundbooth, graphics in Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop was always there to help out too. Original prototype created in Flash and AS3.

All type set in Apex Sans by Thirstype.

Special thanks for invaluable feedback and beta testing to Jason Corace, Jason Sloan, Andy Mangold, Dai Foldes, Dave Fong, and Josh Hepworth.

Moving Forward

Planned updates to Pulsus include an iPhone/iPod version, new objects and levels, and a good list of little improvements here and there.

If you enjoy Pulsus, any rating, reviewing, blogging, and retweeting is appreciated. The better Pulsus does, the better position I’ll be in to make more, and better games in the future. I may even be able to convince the rest of the Friends of The Web to work together on some awesome games.

For the past few months I’ve been hard at work building a flash game. As my first game (but hopefully not last) it was a bit of an adventure, but worthwhile in the end. There are certainly still details to be worked out and some extra features to finish off, but overall it’s come out pretty well.

First go play it! Then come back here if you’d like to know a little more about how the game was created.

I’m not one to preface my work, but I would like to mention that I am not a gamer in any respect. This being said, I may not be aware of all the game conventions I should be following, despite a good amount of ‘research’. If you have any tips for this or future games, feedback is always appreciated. You can leave public comments here or send me feedback through the Pulsus contact form.

Recently, thanks to a class with Jason Corace, I’ve become interested in games as interactive systems. In the same class I developed a card game and created Pulsus for my final project.

The Game

The game, Pulsus, is a puzzle game about particle systems. Players have to place objects to direct particles from emitters into goals. While it is a puzzle game, it is also about exploring a dynamic system.

In the game, players solve puzzles by placing objects onto the stage which effect the way the particles move. In each level the particles must be moved from particle emitters into goal points. Different colored goals accept only particles of that color. Particles must hit the goal quickly enough to fill it up, but once it is complete is will remain filled. The colored force objects will attract their own color while repelling others. Grey objects interact with all particles in the same way.

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