bout Prrrpl and Emiel Kampen

Emiel Kampen is owner of Prrrpl (Purple) Indie game designer from Haarlem. He owns a paper that says ‘Master’s degree in Art and Technology’ but it doesn’t mention his 10+ years of (game)industry experience. Emiel loves to create simple, sexy and unique games. He has created multiple games in Gamemaker and Unity 3D where he often covered multiple roles including game-designer, game-developer, level-designer, gameplay-programmer, ui,- and graphic designer.

Feel free to check out and play his latest games ‘Still Here‘ (iOS, Android, co-created with David Smit) , ‘Should Shoot‘ (iOS, created solo). You could also play ‘Hope Squadron‘ made in 2 weeks in Pico-8 on itch.io or ‘Let’s Go Tokyo‘, his 2014 Global Gamejam project ‘Gewoon Puinhoop‘ (windows), 2015 Global Gamejam Project ‘Super Turbo Action Rainbows’ (S.T.A.R.)‘ to get an idea of his pressure cooker coding skills. Tafelmonsters is a nice showcase of Emiel’s skill as a game designer and artist.

Emiel is also a teacher/supervisor at the Utrecht University of Arts where he supervised (student) indie teams like Vlambeer, the Ostrich Banditos and Vogelsap amongst others and projects for Guerrilla-games, Little Chicken, Gambitious and more.

Last but not least, Emiel is a presenter at Gamekings. In his show: ‘Indiekings‘, Emiel sits down with an Indie developer to discuss the Indie’s game or portfolio and discuss the state of the (indie) game industry. If you would like to be a guest on the show, please send a message to emiel [at] prrr.pl.

For more information on Emiel please check out this interview with Gamekings where he shares why he loves games and he also shares his vision and idea on what exciting future is in store for our industry (Dutch): Gamergasten met Emiel Kampen

Stay fresh, stroke your cat, keyboard or phone while playing Prrrpl games!

An innocent exploration game

Still Here is a mobile game that makes players feel like taking a nice morning stroll through nature. It’s an innocent exploration game for Mobile and will be released worldwide Q2 2017. The game was born from ‘Pipworld‘ an iteration of a worldbuilding project by Emiel’s Utrecht University of Arts (HKU) former classmate David Smit.

After creating Should Shoot, Emiel started exploring different monetisation strategies like free to play in his new prototypes. When filming for Gamekings Emiel encountered David at AMAZE in Berlin where David shared his first prototypes. Both realising their projects could use some focus as well as creative input, David and Emiel decided to have 2-weekly meetings over Skype to share ideas and progress on their projects.

Fed up with Gamemaker and all of it’s quirks Emiel decided to learn how to use Unity and C# to create his next game. During this proces Emiel got more and more involved with Pipworld, which slowly evolved into ‘Still Here’.

Still here is bound to release Q2 2017 for devices. If you would like to play an early versions of the game you can request it here. To learn more about the game and it’s development please visit the blog or the official website.

Adorable Co-op Shmup!

Hope Squadron was made by me in 2 weeks on my 2017-2018 holiday break. It’s my first project in Pico-8 using the LUA language. It’s a local multiplayer Shoot’m Up with a touching narrative.

As a child I loved Shoot ‘m ups like Major Stryke, Raptor, R-Type and Gradius. I’ve always wanted to make a Shmup. I also thought: why not make one that you can play with a friend?

The protagonist of the game is a little girl who has one wish: to see her mother recover from a strange illness. Since doctor’s don’t know how to cure mom, the little girl uses her super secret hide-out and a shrink ray provided by Dr. Teddy to take out her mother’s invaders herself.

The inspiration for this project also came from a seminar I organized at the Utrecht University of Arts where the assignment was for students to make a game within 2 weeks and self-publish it on Itch.io. I wanted to see if I could do it myself and as soon as I had time started on this project.

Two players: one screen

Should Shoot is a competitive ‘two-players-on-one-screen’ game for mobile devices. It’s released on iOS 29th of januari in the BENELUX and will be released internationally on 24th of February 2016. It will come to Android devices sometime in 2016.

In Should Shoot: your character IS your finger, where the player taps on the screen is where its character is in the game world. There are different game modes. All of them obviously, involve player’s having to shoot something: each other (Vs. Simple Mode), a rocket (Vs. Rocket Mode) or a ball (Vs. Ball). Player’s aim their shot by pulling back their finger, opposite of where they want to shoot. Releasing your finger from the screen fires a shot. The feeling of control and accuracy allow fierce battles to take place! The single-player modes also have a competitive vibe: it mainly involves shooting either rockets (1P Rocket Mode) or balls (1P Ball Mode).

As a fan of (local) multiplayer games, I often wondered why there is nothing on a mobile phone that fuels the competitive spirit like the games we play on consoles. Most people around us carry a mobile device around with more horsepower then those that housed the games that gave us bragging rights as a teenage gamer. With Should Shoot, my mission was to create a game that allows people to compete and thus: scream, yell, laugh and smirk whenever they feel the impact of winning or losing.

Should Shoot is available for download in the BENELUX! For updates and more information about Should Shoot and it’s release on other platforms, follow: @Prrrpl on twitter and/or like facebook.com/prrrpl.

An Expressive game: Tokyo Let’s Go

Tokyo Let’s Go allows players to experience how I felt at times during my trip to the wonderful and very busy Tokyo. It’s a simple game for Windows and Mac.

Players click and drag to create orbits. Objects coming in to the screen can be caught by these orbits. When the player clicks the orbiting objects he or she can make them disappear. The goal of the game is to make sure the tourist in the background does not go crazy because of all the sounds and motions on screen.

This game was made while I was on a trip for Dutch TV Show Gamekings, to Tokyo. We spend five days filming the final episode of Gamekings season 16. It was my first time in Japan and quite intense at times. We covered the fun times in our video diary (check below, in Dutch) and to cope with the hard times, I decided to make a game.

Tokyo Let’s Go was made in a week and will be released on iOS AppStore as well.

Tokyo Trip Diary on Gamekings.nl (Dutch)

A SIMPLE YET CHALLENGING PUZZLE GAME

Jay van Hutten created the wonderful 3DS puzzle game ‘Pazuru’. Thirty challenging levels in this game were created by me!

‘This is clearly a very low budget game (it’s even a 3DS title with no 3D effect – at all!), primarily driven by a single person, but the level design is sheer genius. ‘ – Criticalgamer.co.uk

Pazuru is an easy to learn, hard to master puzzle game. Twist, bounce, warp and toggle your way through the levels, collecting stars along the way. Take on the challenge to collect all stars and complete the levels in as few actions as possible for the perfect score. This brain-twisting action-puzzler comes with over 70 levels and a built-in level editor so you can create your own levels. Share them worldwide, online and offline via QR codes!

When creating the levels, I tried to stimulate the player to feel ‘the flow’. Clearing a level usually requires the player to understand the puzzle and influence the level by inputting a pattern of commands. Some levels look like characters or objects. My personal favourite is the moustached man.

Ever since 2008, I have been lecturing at the Utrecht University of Arts (HKU). I started lecturing the Usability and Playability courses for first and second year interaction design, game design and game art students. My courses are based on my experience as a playtest monitor at Guerrilla Games and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEA). From 2009 and onwards, I also started mentoring Bachelor students, mentoring the Design for Space project as well as other projects.

I had the honour of mentoring and lecturing multiple (now big name) talented students including Jay van Hutten, Vlambeer, The Ostrich Banditos, Vogelsap, Speelbaars and Turtleneck studios.

Super Turbo Action Rainbows are here! Another gamejam, that means I had 48 hours to create a game. Together with Sonja van Vuure (art-lead) , Jay van Hutten (design and programming) and Rianne Schaekens (art) we created another local multiplayer game! This time, it’s about competitive, co-operative multiplayer fun!

The goal of the game is to push coloured alien babies into a warp hole. Players can do this using a rainbow. The rainbow can move on one axis (horizontal or vertical) and move objects on the other axis. That means if you control a vertical rainbow, you can move horizontally and push the baby in a vertical direction: up or down. In order to win, a vertical rainbow HAS to co-operate with a horizontal rainbow. It’s a kind of prisoners dilemma, since you have to co-operate with the people you are trying to beat!

Our game got an honourable mention of the jury! I was the lead programmer and game-designer during the jam. It was quite stressful since I was also hosting a special episode of Indiekings for gamekings.tv while I was jamming!

http://www.gamekings.tv/videos/indiekings-met-de-global-game-jam-2015-op-de-hku/

The global game jam is a yearly event where people get together to do something insanely crazy and difficult: create a game in 48 hours. In 2014 I participated in the global gamejam together with my team called ‘Gewoon Koel’. We had an incredible time creating ‘Gewoon Puinhoop’. It’s a local multiplayer game with 3 game modes.

Gewoon Koel consisted of Jay van Hutten (coding,- UI, design), Jacqueline van Rhijn (art), Bart-Jan Bultman (coding, art) and myself (lead tech, gamedesign). Jay, Bart-jan and myself created our own prototype in the first 3 hours. We played through them all and my concept proofed to be the most fun.

The goal of the game is to kill the other characters by hitting them with a spear. The action takes place within the game world, which is as big as the screen. After throwing the spear, players can pick it back up, being vulnerable while un-armed. Players control a squid, crocodile, rooster or an orange indefinable fuzzy.. thing. None of this makes sense but it is a lot of fun!

I am incredibly proud of the fact we managed to create 3 game modes. Players can choose a game mode by picking up the object that is vital to each specific mode. For example, to start the Bee mode, one player has to grab the beehive at the start of the game. Bees will then appear on the screen and bug a player. A player can get rid of the bees by tagging another player. After 30 seconds, the player that is chased by the bees loses. It’s kind of like a game of tag, with bees. Another mode has players collecting Diamonds and Coins. After 30 seconds, the player that collected the most loot wins the game.

In order to play Gewoon Puinhoop, you need the Windows operating system, at least 2 controllers and 4 human beings. Download Gewoon Puinhoop.

Tafelmonsters! is an app for iOS I created for Malmberg when working for IJsfontein Interactive. The objective was to create an app that would facilitate memorising multiplication tables. The game was created in a month by myself together with Tim Groeneboom (programmer).

In Tafelmonsters! Players have to feed a candy to an approaching monster. The monster is hungry for a candy that has the solution to the multiplication sum that he is calling for. Players can drag or swipe to throw the candy with the solution after they selected the solution from the number bar above the candy. For this App, I came up with the concept, UI and game-design. I also monitored a play-test which helped us to create the user-interface inserting the right answers on the candy.

During the play-test, I found out kids don’t have any knowledge of a conventional input interface like a calculator. Therefore, some kids insert 7 and then 1 when they want to enter 17 since the dutch pronunciation is ‘seven-teen’. To allow kids to handle the input that way, we enabled them to insert singles first and decimals later OR vice versa.

The app was released in 2012, although it is still prominently used to this date. It also was also selected ‘Best Educational App’ by Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper) and eduapp.nl.

You can download it from the iOS App Store.