Vile Haberdashery and Other Assorted Goodies

On the weekend of the January 29, I had the pleasure of participating in the Global Game Jam. Participants show up at one of the official locations on Friday, and at 5:00 pm receive that year's theme. At that point, people break and brainstorm ideas over food, then present their game outlines and divide up into teams. Participants then have until 3:00 that Sunday to create a complete, working video game. There were over 300 locations this year in over 35 countries.

The theme for this year was "Deception!", with the added challenge that our game had to include either a "maid, a raid, or a trade." I teamed up with 3 other people: Hannah McGill (creator of the lovely Pawnography poster in the previous post and my sister), Hector Saenz (a co-worker, friend, and podcast-bumper-recording rival), and CC Chamberlin (a co-worker and founding member of Barking Dog Interactive). Together we slaved over the next 48 hours to create a game for the iPhone called Vile Haberdashery.

Vile Haberdashery is a multiplayer iPhone game that uses only one phone. Players take turns as one of four siblings, trying to kill each other off to gain a larger portion of the inheritance. Blackmail, coerce, and flatter household subordinates into doing your dirty work for you. All character art was handled by Hector, Hannah, and I, with some help from CC. CC handled all of the programming, and pitched the original idea. This was one of those rare things where the initial idea worked flawlessly, and allowed us to devote all of our time to making really awesome artwork. All of the work here was done by the three of us.

I had a ton of fun at the game jam. Honestly, I was worried before it started that this was going to be just a big waste of time, that I would be giving up my whole weekend without even being able to complete the game. I am happy to report that I was really, really wrong. The whole event was a ton of fun, and we not only finished our game but submitted it to the iTunes app store! You can purchase it right now at the iTunes App Store for $1.99.

The theme was really great, especially since it provided me with an excuse to draw a sultry lookin' maid (something that doesn't happen too much when making educational games). And now I will finish this post with some more artwork from the game, and an unrelated picture of ravens because I drew it and I like them.