Hi, I’m Aiden and I love gaming. I am 21 and have had a passion for it for as long as I can remember. From watching my parents play Little Big Adventure and Halo when I was young; to solo playing game series from Assassin’s Creed to The Sims; then to sessions online with my friends and family on CS:GO, Diablo or Ark; and now I am making beautiful and exciting games myself.
I have a higher second class BA (Hons) Degree in Game Design and am currently studying my Masters Degree, specialising in UI Design.
I have played The Sims series since its first game launched in the year 2000. I have played all of the main games extensively and still regularly return to its
What Makes User Interface Work? To understand what makes UI work, we must first look at the two key elements, narrative and the fourth wall. Toptal.com defines narrative as: ‘the story that a video game
What Makes User Interface Look Good? To understand what makes UI look good, we must first look at what it is. Dictionary.com defines user interface (UI) as: ‘The interface features through which
Summary This is a short experiment to test the feasibility of my area of interest and to identify initial areas and sources of research. I will be finding a game with
This cartoon style game is a 2.5D platform game. To create the extra dimension, there is be a background, mid-ground and foreground along with a 3D character in order to give visual depth.
Story
The game about a dog called Smudge. Smudge wakes up in a cave, lost and unsure how she got there. Scared and alone, she must face her own fears and her inner demons to find her owner again. As she begins to explore the cave, she meets a spirit, Astra, who takes pity on her and vows to guide her home safely. Astra teaches Smudge to hone her senses in order to see beyond the physical world and help her to explore the environment around her. After focusing her sight and smell abilities, Smudge finds clues that lead her to the edge of the forest where she is reunited with her owner.
Idea Origins
I originally had the idea for my game after losing my dog, Smudge, to cancer back in March 2019. She was a part of my family since I was a child so to suddenly lose her felt awful, and anyone who has loved a pet understands the difficulty and grief in putting them down. I wanted to make a game that reflects this unconditional love between humans and dogs.
My first idea was to make a game where the player character was a dog who had just died. The dog would be between worlds and could not pass on to the afterlife without their owner. The player would have to explore the veil, completing puzzles and fighting enemies, until they were reunited with their owner who had eventually died of old age.
With only a year and only myself to complete this project, I decided I would need to simplify the idea far more in order to meet my deadline. Instead, I settled on a game that very literally shows a lost dog trying to find their owner again, this can also be a metaphor for death and potentially being reunited again one day but does not require the storytelling and scale of the previous idea.
