Bezint eer ge begint is a relaxed choose your own painting game.

Design

Materials

Below you can see a onepage design of the core idea of the game

Project

Approach

Integrating the Design Thinking Process Guide (which means, a focus on empathizing with the target group)

Locking down the design after a certain point in time, to provide stability during production phase

Clear responsibilities for every teammember

Result / Evaluation

Group design really really is not a thing: only once we decreased the size of the group actively designing the game, were we able to produce results.

We spent too much time finding a good problem definition for the target group, resulting in not having enough time to hone the design of the final product.

I am glad I did not take on the responsilibity of being the project lead, allowing me to focus on both design and programming

Description

The goal for this project was to create a game elderly people could benefit from. This was a project I was thrilled to work on, for two reasons: one, it was the kind of project that I could see myself doing in the future: creating a game to help improve people’s lives and two, all of my teammembers were highly skilled with great mindsets.

So, creating something good would be easy right? Well … no. First of all, the target group proved to be tricky to adequately capture: it turns out old people are a very diverse group. Who would have thought. We needed to zoom in on a single problem, but this was a hard endeavour given the fact that during the earlier stages of the project, all seven! of us were trying to reach consensus about what to zoom in on.

We wanted to find the problem definition just right for our team, the school assignment and the target group.

Finding this exact right problem definition was a slow process. Too slow, in fact, so we split our group, giving just a few people control over the concept. In hindsight, this should have been one of the first things to do. These people could then gather all information and research findings other team members collected, and use that to create a concept. Discussions about this concept should be between a maximum of three people, and not between the whole group of seven.

With our small designer group, we were able to quickly define an approach to the project, supported by the large amount of research we already did.

However, we did not have much time left for production at that point. Fortunately, we weren’t short on artists, and we had created an art-heavy concept to put most of the production work on their shoulders.

I’m quite happy with the end result. We were aiming to create a game that proved games weren’t only an (often violent) means of entertainment, but could be gentle works of art too. Reactions that this “was a peaceful game” and “a bit like a real painting” hint that we may have achieved that goal.

Project Role

Niels de Jong – designer, programmer

Kevin van As – (only a part of the project) designer

Rody Muijers – project lead, artist

Esmeé van ‘t Hoff – artist

Loïs Vehof – artist

Youri Stans – artist

Sabeth van der Voort – art lead, artist

Project Duration

7 weeks

started the 8th of february, 2016

published on the 1st of april, 2016

Play time

5 minutes

Links

This game was originally designed for tablet. As such, it plays best on an android tablet.

In Burst, you glide peacefully ever forward. Until. An artgame.

Play time

+- 4 minutes

Links

Play in-browser web version

Project Description

Burst was created in a short timeframe (a few weeks at most) It won third place in a competition which challenged you to create an artgame.

I remember being quite pleased with what I was able to accomplish. The game is not extremely complex, but it’s still nice to complete something. Plus, it can be quite soothing to just glide along.

Originally published on 12-11-2013

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art and sound assets.

The music ‘Yearning’ was made by blazingdragon.

Stairwell is an artgame about growing old.

In 5 levels, it tells the story of a young man visiting his grandmother. A game with literary aspirations.

Play time

+- 2 minutes per level

+- 10 minutes in total

Links

Play in-browser web version

Project Description

Old people have always made me feel slightly uneasy. They know of a world that just isn’t there anymore, and I have the idea that after a certain point, you simply lose touch with the world as it is now, because that nonexisting world has grown so large.

I created this game for a competition with the theme ‘dubbel’. This is a Dutch word that can be interpreted as either ‘double’ or as ‘ambivalent’.

This game was somewhat unique in that I designed it (almost) completely upfront, taking one week. I created the game in the two weeks after that.

Originally published on 29-8-2012

Project Role

I designed, programmed and created all art assets.

The music was made by blazingdragon, the sound effects come from freesound.org (see the credits)

The verhalenmachine is a story generating application. Sometimes it makes sense.

The machine generates stories but they are destined to fade away, giving each story only a small chance to captivate its readers.

Play time

1 minute / story

infinite stories

Links

Play in-browser web version

Project Description

This little project was created as an art piece for a school assignment. It was displayed on a digital schoolboard.

It was originally published on the web on 26-2-2013.

Project Role

I designed and programmed everything in the application.

Some of the words have been provided by relatives.