Wild Ice Bird
2020 | Adventure | Android and iOS
I started off with the idea of a dark, edgy, RPG about a scary, loner penguin navigating destructive relationships in a collapsing society. I came out of production with a cute, uncomplicated game for all ages where you hunt for food in an arctic maze, while avoiding predators and engaging in fellowship with other penguins. WIB is fun and completable for mobile and a good IP for branching out into 3D, augmented reality, and virtual reality.
Spartacrab
2020 | Action | Android and iOS
With one claw as a sword and the other as a shield, Spartacrab battles fierce crustaceans to claim the arena’s ultimate prize of freedom! I drew inspiration from both Spartacus’ slave revolt in ancient Rome and the analogy describing how envious people block the progress of their co-equals by comparison to captured crabs stopping each other from climbing out of fishermen’s buckets. I didn’t succeed at making significant historical or social commentary, but the game is engaging nonetheless. It’s a great Beat ’Em Up that packs a complete gaming experience into one hour. I love this game, like the idea of making a sequel, and hate the thought of watching more reference video of crabs in buckets. Happy crabs on beaches are adorable, though.
Dimness
2020 | Puzzle Adventure | Android and iOS
Help a sentient lightbulb find their way through each maze before they burn out and their glass mysteriously shatters in the darkness. If you survive a maze, you are rewarded with an Aristotle quote. Each time you fail, the next time you go through that maze you’ll see an additional ghost of a dead bulb haunting your path. I can’t remember if I placed the ghost bulbs so they’d make the maze easier, more freaky, or both. I wanted to implement more ideas about lightbulbs as allegories for…ideas, but there are enough stressful job-like single player games out there. Dimness is about enjoying a light challenge.
Black Ham BBQ
2020 | Arcade Shooter | Android and iOS
ORGANIC and the Garden Empire collude at a clandestine base somewhere in the Grand Dessert to undermine the sovereignty of the Mousse Coalition. Luckily for the Moussians, Mousse Intelligence Foods agent Black Ham has been dispatched by Col. Bird to destroy the facility. I designed the world of Black Ham from the ground up as a comics series to cram every wacky idea I could into a cohesive universe based around food puns and humanoid food people in a world filled with warfare and political strife.
I released Black Ham BBQ as a browser game and then a year or so later, I added touch controls, fixed up a few things here and there, then ported it to mobile. The gameplay is simple; you move a combat burger across the bottom of the screen and exchange gunfire with enemy meatballs. Drawing the animations for this one was a blast; often literally. My favorite is on the last level, while in the process of escaping on a motorcycle, Ham shoots down a helicopter as a meatball hangs from the window firing rockets. I cut 95% of the story and gameplay I’d planned; the project was too big for what I could handle at the time. Don’t be surprised if you see more Black Ham Universe games in the future.
Thanks,
Michael David Marshall
Founder/Director/Game Developer