Control the Mission at Mission Control

Bzzzz .... Come in Mission Control. This is Boop. Satellite parts are falling from the sky. I repeat, important stuff is falling from the sky: please advise. ... zzzzt.

Read the above in your best Mars rover voice, and you'll have an idea of what's going on inside my head when I play MISSION CONTROL. This is the last of the set of games we created for Ready Jet Go! Space Scouts. Players are tasked with putting together a control panel that covers everything from sucking up recyclables, to exploring Mars, to saving broken satellites.

Boop's magnetic personality really comes in handy.

I would post a picture of Gopherwood Studios's Mission Control where we succeeded in our mission to bring you Mission Control, but Todd's desk is too messy. (Todd, I'm writing this, so you have no platform to talk about my desk.)

In Mission Control, players add controls to a control panel to control Jet 2 (a robot), Boop (a Mars rover), and the Propulsion's spaceship (I don't know its name... ...let's call it Claire). Once the control panel is built, players use the panel they've created as the input controls to move around the map and complete goals.

Claire tidying up with a tractor beam.

That's it!

Or is it?

No, also, there's a satellite falling apart and asteroid vortexes, but you'll have to play to see what that's all about.

Jet 2 recycles... not like those other robots that litter the landscape with trash cubes.

We worked with Miles Tilmann to bring Mission Control to life (you might recognize some of his other work at PixelJam: it's fun too). Mindy was also a great help: with her eternally chipper demeanor and great all-around attitude, you two will get along nicely completing all those missions.

Bzzzzzzzzt.

Food Farmer Forever!

Do you love to garden? Do you wish you could grow a garden inside? Do you get impatient waiting for your vegetables to grow? Do you wish you could click the clouds so they stop blocking the sun's life-giving rays? Do you want to shrink into a tiny version of yourself to see what you're growing up close? Do you want to plant a garden on Mars? What about Mercury? Do you like eating carrots that are just as big as you are? Do you want to earn badges like "Prize Garden" or "Tons of Tomatoes" to honor yourself for your clever gardening skills?

Enough carrots to make 314 miniature carrot cakes.

If you answered "YES" to any of those questions, then we've created a gaming experience you will love: Food Farmer! You'll get to grow a variety of plants on a variety of planets. Woah.

Martian potatoes are the best potatoes. - Mark Watney

Each planet serves up it's own challenges: Earth provides rain, but Mars and Mercury require a full-time gardener on the watering can. You'll never run out of sufficient sunlight on Mercury, but you'll want to avoid giving your garden too much and cooking your vegetables before they're ready! Somehow aphids and bees made it into the Martian and Mercurian greenhouses: bees are super-helpful, but keep an eye on those aphids...

A big thanks to Miles Tilmann for his work in developing this game, and it was a pleasure working with PBS KIDS and Wind Dancer to bring this game to life! Check it out and let your kids play too.

Amazin' Amazon Adventure!

Todd and I have a lot in common with the Kratt Brothers. They're brothers and coworkers. We're coworkers. They love going on world-wide adventures to show animals to kids. I have a dog. Their cartoon selves have the coolest gadgets. Our cartoon selves would have cool gadgets if we had cartoon selves. They wear blue and green. We wear blue and green sometimes, too!

With that much in common, we were super-honored to help create Amazin' Amazon Adventure, a game about creatures, their unique creature powers, and the triumph of good over evil! (Stop stealing innocent creatures, Zach.)

Whiff!

For those who have followed us for some time, this may be a bit of déjà vu: back in 2013 we created Monkey Mayhem, another Wild Kratts title where the brothers navigate the Amazon Rainforest. Both games are 2d platformers set in the Amazon with characters using their Creature Power Suits to navigate an obstacle-filled jungle. That said, the direction on this most recent game focuses on more action-based activity and exploration, whereas the first was more about solving puzzles to make forward progress.

Ah! You're downside up!

We also took level generation to the next level with this title. Each level is a grid comprised of up to 20 unique level sections to create a unique experience with each play-through (unlike Monkey Mayhem, which had 3 unique sections per level). In addition to the variety of level pieces, the number of obstacles increases as the player progresses through the game, ramping up to a final generated level that makes use of all the player's creature powers.

From the top of the canopy to the bottom of the river, lots of Amazon to explore!

We had fun designing this game with the Kratt Brothers team and PBS KIDS, and we hope you and your kids enjoy the game and learn a bit about the amazing creatures in the Amazon along the way!

Build the Best Bases in Base Builder

Have you ever built a base on Mars, and then were all like, "Boy, I wish I could build a base on Earth too." Look no further; now you can! Base Builder offers the Moon, Mars, and even the Earth as potential building sites for all your base (are belong to us -- sorry, couldn't help it... ...and you knew it was coming eventually anyway). Watch out, though: it's not all fun-and-games (well, actually it is). There's wind, rain, meteorites, and proper architectural techniques to contend with to make sure your toy astronauts are protected and able to live, nay, flourish in these harsh environments.

I'm a world-renown builder of bases. No, I'm not.

This game captures the heart of the Space Scouts premise: a playful learning environment where you're free to experiment, make connections, and discover creative solutions to solve problems.

It's a mighty base that can withstand an onslaught of malevolent meteorites.

Try it out! And let your kids have a turn! This game was a blast to work on - a falling-meteorite-hitting-a-sturdy-shock-reinforced-astronaut-base blast to work on.

Ready Jet Go! Space Scouts - The Lab

It's here! A brand new app, Ready Jet Go! Space Scouts, is comprised of 5 games and an open-play lab that connects them all! Compared to previous Gopherwood Studios projects, this one was the biggest yet: we designed and developed Cooking School, Rover Maker, Base Builder, Mission Control, and Food Farmer each as a standalone game, and then created the Space Scouts Home Base, badge system, and Lab in the app itself to tie the games together and create a single fun and engaging experience.

The inception for the app started with my nearly-endless enjoyment playing with Fantastic Contraption and my fascination with Lego bricks. What if we made a game that incorporated the open-play of Lego but the more-directed play of Fantastic Contraption? Wait, what if we made a bunch of different games, but you could mix and match pieces between games to make new things? As we began working through the ultimate design for this app, addressing these game design questions and considering reward structure and educational goals, I began working on an early investigative prototype to flesh out the ideas a bit more, especially regarding an open-play experience that incorporates elements from different games.

"Yes, I'm testing. Totally. Not playing. Nope." pic.twitter.com/tqZnkBYELy

— Derek Detweiler (@derekdetweiler) March 6, 2018

The prototype was an open-play "Lab" that focused on a pin and strut mechanic. Early on, we found that this was a bit too clunky for our target audience and honestly quite frustrating on mobile devices. We continued to wrestle with the basic handling of game elements as the individual games were designed. Base Builder started with loose joints and floppy beams, which, after many iterations, ended with stiff joints and static beams to make game-play easier and more intuitive for our target audience. Rover Maker avoided beams altogether and went more of a building-block route from the onset: blocks snap together to create a rollin' rover.

As the game-play across titles solidified, integrating each of the games into the Lab proved to be a huge challenge. Base Builder and Rover Maker provided natural elements for the Lab, but Cooking School was an odd fit, and Mission Control and Food Farmer had completely different mechanics from the other three titles. Merging these into a cohesive whole required a bit of creativity.

Adding Cooking School ingredients was easy enough: playing with your food is fun. However, the kitchen tools didn't really have a place to be in the Lab, Gravity put them on the ground (which doesn't work well for various reasons, like the Mixer tool that outputs mixtures downward). They can't levitate like the game, because it looks odd and breaks the other games' elements in peculiar ways. Lastly, it opened new questions about what exactly can be processed by a kitchen tool? Astronaut dolls from Base Builder shouldn't, but what about Rover Maker wheels? Can they be fed into a Cooking School Chopper? Ultimately, we decided to add a "wall" block, identical to the Rover Maker blocks in functionality, but visually conveying the sense that kitchen tools could be "pinned" to them. Kitchen tools were then implemented to behave just like Rover Maker rockets and wheels: they can be attached to blocks and won't process other pin-able things like wheels.

Mission Control was tougher: it doesn't really have "pieces" of things to work with like the other titles. So for this game, I added Boop, the rover, and Jet 2, Jet's trusty robot, as items in the Lab. The Lab play area was also extended to provide more room for these two to go exploring and interact with other Lab items.

Finally, Food Farmer. Adding this game into the Lab focused primarily on the food, since we already had kitchen tools in place to process vegetables! In addition to the basic food items, their various cooked, sliced, and diced versions were added. Now players could cook their watermelon and pop their corn!


That's a bit of an overview regarding the Lab and how it came together. Check out the app and see what kind of awesome machines you can make in the Lab! I just thought of something...

Gotta run... ...I'm off to build a battery-powered popcorn-popping, five-wheeled toppling tower on the moon!

Cooking School and Delicious Martian Smoothies

What's more refreshing than a brand new game? A brand new game where you can mix up an ice-cold, delicious Martian smoothie, that's what! Check out Cooking School and help Mindy figure out how to arrange Carrot's kitchen tools to make an assortment of spacey and space-themed snacks!

Choppin', Conveyin', 'n Cookin'

This is the second game title that's also included in the Ready Jet Go Space Scouts app (Rover Maker is as well).

Delicious hoagie coming up!

Have fun and let us know what you think! Also, let us know if you cook up one of these recipes IRL: not sure these will turn out correctly using non-Bortronian, conventional kitchen appliances, but we're interested none-the-less.

A big thanks to Wind Dancer and PBS KIDS for letting us bring this game to life!

Make Rovers in Rover Maker

Wish you could design fancy rovers to rove around on other planets like Mars? Or other moons like Europa? Wish no more! Just play our latest game, Rover Maker, and make your friends, kids, and rover-making scientists jealous with your creative rover creations. Actually, don't make all those people jealous. That's not very nice. Just share Rover Maker with them so that they can also make creative rover creations. There are plenty of rover parts to go around, thanks to Ready Jet Go! and Sunspot and Sydney's endless supply of rover-making resources.

Hmm, might need to revisit this design.

There's a lot of free-form open-play in this game to really use your imagination as you create rovers to address the terrain and other obstacles of each planet and moon. Rovers can be powered by gravity, wind power, solar power, batteries, and even rockets, as you try to match your rover's capabilities to the level's layout and navigate Sunspot across the level to Sydney waiting patiently at the other end.

Whoops. I'm a game designer. Not a rover designer.

Why are you still here?!? Go have fun; let's see what you can make!

Mission Earth

We don't usually fancy ourselves as astronauts, but the past few months have changed our trajectory forever. We've been won over by the Propulsions, an alien family of travel writers, and have decided to help them show Earth's exciting features to the curious populace of their home planet, Bortron 7.

Mindy's on a mission.

Although this didn't involve us flying into space, which we're pretty bad at, it did involve us making a game, which we happen to be good at. Introducing MISSION EARTH, an exciting platformer that encourages you to snap photos of interesting Earth features and transmit them to Bortron 7.

She has a keen eye for photogenic animals.

Once you give it a try, you should probably let your kids play too: not only is it fun, there is a big helping of discoveries just waiting to be made by explorers everywhere.

Jet's arms are just a little stretchier than regular-ole Earthie arms.

We've really enjoyed working with the teams at PBS KIDS and READY JET GO to bring this game to life. Let us know what you think!


...unless you're thinking about something that has nothing to do with this blog post. In that case, don't let us know what you think.




Actually, I am just a little curious. If you read this post and are thinking of something entirely unrelated... ...maybe it's important - you can go ahead and let us know.






On the other hand, it probably isn't any of our business or the Internet's either. Feel free to keep it to yourself.

A Subterranean Search for Fossils

We're happy to announce that our latest game, Fossil Finder, has been released on the PBS Kids Dinosaur Train site!

Fossil Finder sends kids underground in the Drill Train in search of fossils! To make finding fossils even more fun, the Drill Train has been equipped with a Fossil-O-Meter that lights up as the train gets closer to a fossil. Just follow the meter to the fossil and dig it up!

Watch out though, your drill wears out as you dig! Drill too much and your drill will break and force you to return to the surface! Thankfully minerals can be used to strengthen your drill allowing you to drill even more. The stronger the mineral, the stronger your drill will be!

If you need some extra help finding fossils, you can always ask the local Troglobites. These subterranean dwellers will point you towards nearby fossils. Just follow the arrows!



Now, head on over to see how many fossils you can find!

Rail Rally Release!

Do you love dinosaurs? Do you enjoy trains? Do you find yourself daydreaming about bezier curves? Do you wish that you could experience all three together!?! If that's you (and I am quite sure it is since the you not reading this wouldn't be the same you reading this), we have just delivered on your dream!

That's what we do here at Gopherwood Studios. We make dreams come true. Not all dreams, mind you. Just dreams involving things we're making come true, obviously.

What? Racing against a Zeppelin!?! Is that fair?

Behold Rail Rally! In this prehistoric adventure, the Dinosaur Train chugs across the serene hills of the Cretaceous, racing against three other formidable Troodon inventions: the Solar Train, the Rocket Train, and the Zeppelin. Test your train engineer mettle as your trusty train chugs along the rails, passing bonuses along the way that boost you past your opponents!

After you've finished trying out all four vehicles, give your child a chance to play too. All kids love HTML5 games. Mine do. They're always saying, "If it's not HTML5, it's not really a game." Not really, but one day they'll understand the wisdom of their father's words.

Thanks to the awesome folks at Jim Henson's Dinosaur Train and PBS KIDS for giving us the opportunity to make this dream come true, for you!

Dinosaur Train Gets Remodeled!

Here at Gopherwood Studios, we pride ourselves in our wide range of expertise. We're talented at game design. I'm particularly great at pressing keyboard keys. We're decent software developers. I'm also fantastic at describing how fantastic we are. And never ones to be shy about the breadth of our expertise, we're now showing off our prowess in engine development. Not game engine development, train engine development! Yes, we've become what every engineer and paleontologist aspires to be, Dinosaur Train developers. Check out how smoothly our latest creation rides the rails.

Once upon a time there was a mom. Her name was Mrs. Pteranodon...

This is a little atypical for us, since we usually make games, but the dinosaurs (especially Derek Deinonychus) really enjoyed Station Race and thought we could put more trains on more web pages. Boy were they on the right track! We really trained the Dinosaur Train home page and gave the rest of the site new digs worthy of the Cretaceous.

Have your 4-year-old check it out and let us know what she thinks! We've found that kids really dig the latest HTML5 standards (and dinosaurs and trains can be pretty cool too).

A big thanks is in order to folks at PBS KIDS and Henson for giving us the opportunity to put together the new site and pretend we're time-traveling paleontologist train engineers!

Lightning Runners

Todd and I had a blast working on Heartbeat - Lightning Runners; check it out! Developed in collaboration with Digital Eskimo for the University of Western Sydney, this puzzle-platformer is aimed at addressing health and culture with aboriginal children in Sydney, Australia.

AAAAaaaah! It's a Dooligah!!!

We designed unique puzzles for each level, so progress involves avoiding baddies as well as solving problems related to health.

Kuti wonders, "What could be wrong? And why is sewage pouring into the wetland?"

Also, unlike any game we've made up to this point, this one has a ferocious end-game boss!

If you think this is ugly, wait until he starts spitting phlegm.

Hope you enjoy the game, and let us know what you think!

We Met Some Future Game Designers

We had the opportunity this past Monday to present at the Maiden Middle School Video Game Club. It was a ton of fun, and they were a great audience! We started with a really informative presentation, sharing a bit about ourselves, what we do, and how we do it.

VERY informative... ...leave it to game developers to turn it into a game...

After our presentation and Q&A (where they stumped us with hard questions), we had the club participate in game design with our latest alpha. We gave them about 10 minutes to play it, and then we talked about what they thought, what worked well, and what could be improved. They had some fantastic and insightful feedback that should make the game better as we continue to develop it.

Oh, and we always enjoyed these while in school, so we threw in a pop quiz... ...let us know how you do!  (Sorry, we probably won't hire you.)

Dinosaur Train Goes Mobile!

One thing I love about working on web games is that you get to write lots of blog posts about how you've just finished something because web games tend to a have a pretty quick turn-around compared to the console games I used to work on. So, today, it's my pleasure to write another one!

We've had the pleasure, over the last 6 months, to work with the PBS Kids and Jim Henson folks on several titles related to the Dinosaur Train property. They're moving into the HTML5 realm and we got to be a small part of that and learned a lot about dinosaurs and time-traveling trains along the way.

There were several parts to the project, so here's a breakdown:

I wish the river rafting trips I went on had whirlpools like that!

• River Run - The newest Dinosaur Train game. This one is based on the latest season of Dinosaur Train in which the Dinosaurs go on various adventures at Adventure Camp. In River Run players join Don and Buddy as they paddle down river in search of bugs for Don's collection. Player's can play single or multiplayer taking on the role of Don or Buddy competing to see who can find the most bugs. I'll probably put up another post talking more about this game, but until then, you can try it out here.

You would think they could make the path to the convention center a little less...maze-like.

• Buddy's Amazing Adventure ported to HTML5 - Buddy's Amazing Adventure is an example of a great existing title created by the nice folks at Fablevision that we reworked in HTML5 so mobile users could play it too. I think Derek did a great job of recreating the experience and users will be hard pressed to find the difference between the Flash and HTML5 versions. If you want to try to find the difference visit this link on mobile and desktop devices. The mobile version is ours, while the desktop version will load Fablevision's original version.

Prehistory's nemesis to a well-washed car.

• Field Guide ported to HTML5 - The Field Guide is essentially a giant dinosaur encyclopedia. We took the existing Flash version and ported it to HTML5. Along the way, we learned a whole lot of dinosaur facts by osmosis (Did you know Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of 36 feet? That's crazy!). You can check it out here.

Even Giganotosaurus needs his moment in the spotlight.

• Mobile Website - PBS Kids already has an excellent desktop friendly Dinosaur Train website, but they didn't have a version that worked on mobile devices. So, we put together a site for mobile users. PBS Kids automatically redirects traffic to the correct page, so if you're on a mobile device, that link up there will take you to the mobile site we designed.

We hope you'll take some time to explore some of our recent creations and leave us some feedback. Have fun!