What I do at Miniclip

I do lots of different things during my day job at Miniclip, web design, graphic design, animation, and programming – I have to turn my hand to whatever is required, and I seem to be working on something different every day – it’s great. One of my favourite jobs though is working on video games. I tend to have a game project going on all the time, it’s something I can do when everything else is finished.

The games that I work on are generally games that lack something graphically, I get to take the basic game and turn it into something more playable and attractive. Below I have outlined a few of the more recent games that have been released, the ones I’m most proud of.

XRaye

This game was released at the start of this year. It’s based on a fairly old, very difficult, game that was quite nice to play, but not ready for the masses. What started off as a simple update turned into a full blown conversion with new levels and totally different art and slightly modified gameplay. The changes required quite a bit of programming to get things working the way I wanted but I’m pretty happy with the results.

Sudoku

Sudoku is a very old game that has recently had a massive surge in popularity. We decided to get in on the action. Because of this the game is much more recent, and we made it entirely in house, with me doing the art and someone else programming. The idea for the farm yard theme was… interesting 🙂 When we started making the game the programmer wrote a particle system that could be used for fireworks when you completed a puzzle. So that he could see the sparks he made the background blue, the same as the sky in the game, and that got me thinking a farm yard theme. Originally I wanted to call it Moo-duku but it was decided that was just silly.

Dr Carter and the Wheels of Salvation

My favourite game so far, based on a game by another developer, I had free reign on the graphics and think they turned out pretty damn nicely. Dr Carter is a character who has now starred in 3 Miniclip games (none of which were mine), he’s turning into some sort of celebrity (at least in the office).

The music also deserves a mention. I wanted something very atmospheric and filmic, it took a while to find the right music but it adds an extra dimension to what is, at heart, an incredibly simple game.

In depth? No. A good way to waste your lunch break? I think so!

Other Miniclip games…

I have worked on include:

• Sub Commander – Pretty much all of the graphics in Sub Commander are originals created by me. I also got to tweak the gameplay a little
• Hostile Skies – This, and the following 3 games, was a simple tidy up. The game worked fine so it was just a case of tweaking the interface and making things more consistent & attractive.
• Nordic Chill
• Skidoo TT
• Pearl Diver
• Freefaller Dance off – more of a show than a game this was made to advertise a band called Freefaller. The ‘game’ was turned around incredibly quickly. I think it took about 2 days to do the entire thing, which is fast in anyones book.