Linda Kruse graduated from ifs international film school Cologne with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Producing and has been working as producer, web designer and conceptor. Her Master project
SQUIRREL&BÄR has been nominated for the prestigious Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2012.

Linda writes:

My Master project is an adventurous serious game for children age three to six years. Its focus is on learning an additional language through the use of touchscreen devices like smart phones and tablet PCs (iOS, Android). 

So I am designing a Serious Game. What does that mean?

Serious Games

Serious Games are supposed to solve a problem. Though their main purpose is to train or to teach, they also aim to be entertaining. Unlike other digital games, Serious Games are not classified by gameplay or genre. They are instead categorized by their purpose. Serious Games include, among others, educational, political, and news games. The category of serious games for training is also known as “game-learning”. That’s what I am concentrating on.

Learning an Additional Language

Research shows that it is important to be exposed to a second or third language early on in life. This leads not only to more effortless learning of new languages, but also improves proficiency in the first language. My game tries to accomplish just that.

The Story of the Game

SQUIRREL&BÄR are devastated: Their beloved forest is in danger; the bees are sick. The only cure is a magic plant, which grows in the mountains. Unfortunately an evil lynx is standing guard over the plant. And, to make matters worse, the inhabitants of the mountains speak a foreign language that the main characters (and the players) don’t understand.

That’s where the journey of SQUIRREL&BÄR begins. The players guide the main characters through five different worlds. With the help of friendly animals players learn the foreign language that the inhabitants of the mountains speak so that the bees can eventually be healed.

Gameplay

Players are immersed in the world of SQUIRREL&BÄR. Each part of the journey features a different animal as companion to our main characters. Social behavior is a very important aspect of the gameplay; speaking and living along with the characters is a core element. Only by working together as a team the players of SQUIRREL&BÄR can master the quests and save the bees and the forest.

Players acquire the most important sentences and vocabulary of the new language as the journey progresses. Learning is so easy, that it feels like a side effect of the game. New vocabulary is also discovered through mini-games. Learning is fun with SQUIRREL&BÄR.

Interface

As it is designed specifically for use with touchscreen devices, children can access the game with ease and start playing without adult instructions. 

The adventure is structured in chapters, which can be paused anytime. Every chapter can be accessed directly and played again. The game also features a vocabulary book to study newly learnt words and phrases. Moreover the player collects animal cards telling the players more about the animals that have already appeared in the game.

Two difficulty levels serve to entertain older and younger children while also creating a different experience when playing the game a second time. New elements and more vocabulary are introduced when selecting a higher difficulty level. Extensive help and fallback functions are available and prevent frustration.

Last but not least, the dialogue of the animals can be subtitled if an older child is playing the game or if a parent wants to read along.

Outlook

SQUIRREL&BÄR will differ from other currently available games on the market by having an extensive narrative part, and thus also more playtime. The game allows children to learn without pressure. It leaves room for creativity and offers a great experience for exploring new languages. The cute main characters make discovering the language and the nature of the forest as well as beating the game a fun experience.

The natural user interface (NUI) of touch devices allows to target very young players providing them with easy, fun and immersive gameplay.

SQUIRREL&BÄR is currently in development for iOS and Android, with the focus being tablet devices. It will be produced in Cologne and is planned to be released by the end of 2012. 

At the IGF, I met with gamedesigner Daniel Benmergui and talked to him about his experimental game Storyteller.

Also I met with Chris Bell who is the gamedesigner of WAY.

I had the chance to talk to the designers of Dear Esther and Lume right before the awards ceremony.

Also I had the chance to talk to Laura Shigihara, co-composer of the To-The-Moon Soundtrack, who is know for her outstanding audiodesign for Plants vs. Zombies.

Welcome to the 2012 coverage of the Game Developer´s Conference in San Francisco. Throughout the next few days we will give insight into the latest discussions and challenges of the industry and talk to designers, educators business people in our videopodcast.

Day 1 started with the educational summit. I was glad to hear the first keynote of the conference by industry veteran Brian Moriarty, who talked about his student project (glas)perlenspiel. This is a simple Java based game engine, where you can use a simple framework to program games. The whole thing lives from its reduction and offers an easy introduction to basic game design and programming. He showed several impressive results - the toolset is open to use for everyone…

>> http://perlenspiel.org/

This was followed by Toronto based developer Nathan Vella´s (Capy) recap of the business development process around Sward & Swarcery, that was released in cooperation with Superbrothers last year. He reflected on budget, human networks and strategies to implement such a process in a small indie developer team, which seemed not to be always as smooth as they wanted it to go… 

>> http://www.swordandsworcery.com/

Around noon i met Carsten Fichtelmann, MD of German developer Daedalic at the Games Connection - a parallel running business networking event at the Drake´s. I had the chance to peek into early artwork of The Whispered World II, the promising follow up of one of their internationally well performing brands.

>> http://www.daedalic.de/?lang_new=en#1

My afternoon highlight was Brandon Chung´s (Blendo Games) presentation on his 2011 hit Atom Zombie Smasher. This amazing game was completely made by this one guy, being the game designer, artist and programmer in one person. He guided us threw the iterations of his development process and revealed a process of downsizing the complexity of gameplay towards the final version… he is one of the IGF finalist!

>> http://blendogames.com/

Starting off with the Bootcamp-Project, we explored the relationship of games and theatre performance with the development of a pervasive game. Creating a real life game with actors and a scenery was a real challenge for us. Even more so, because WE would have to execute and perform our games with a group of invited guests and fellow students. We teamed up in two groups that would experiment with storytelling, gameplay and performance on two completely different approaches.  

The Dark Side of the Game-Project turned out to become an hommage to the aestetics and topics of Film Noir. The goal of the project was to create a game with the means and tools of film and TV. We were could work solo or in a team. The choice of plattform and tools to create our minor interactive minitures was completely to us.  

In the Rapid Fire Prototyping-Project it was all about the conception and realisation of a series of basic game miniatures in a very short amount of time (2 to 14 days). We were asked to experiment with a variety of game development software to see which would suit best our needs and the needs of the game. To keep our ideas down to earth we used a game-name generator as the initial kick-off for the individual projects.

__________________________________________________________________
BOOTCAMP PROJECT
__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
The Curse Of The Three Headed Monkey

Team:
Onat Hekimoglu
Jack Hoefnagel Jan Reitz

Discription:
A pirate adventure that takes place in the heart of Cologne, where two groups of pirates compete to find Blackbeards treasure for their captain first.

Features / rules:

• Multiple locations
• Many non-player characters which tell a story, give hints and send the players on quests
• Collecting new items and combining them with objects already in their possession to solve riddles
• Like graphic adventures on the PC, but without the boundaries, enabling the players to find other ways to finish the game than those conceived by the game master

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Exposure 3

Team:
Olga Epikhina
Claud Daniel Hermann
Roman Jungblut
Maren Keitel
Katharina Tillmanns

Discription:
A painting game that is centered around light paintings that are created by using a slow shutter speed of a SLR camera.

Features / rules:

• 2 teams of 2 players, 
• 1 audience (judges)
• Storydriven series of challenges
• Strong atmosphere through setting (gods, olymp, hero) and staging (dark room, 
• magical light painting)

__________________________________________________________________
THE DARK SIDE OF THE GAME PROJECT
__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Decapo

Team:
Claus Daniel Herrmann
Roman Jungblut
Jan Reitz

Discription:
Journey of a decapitated robot head in search for a new body.

Features / rules:

• Light and Shadow as main gameplay element
• simple two button controlls
• strong neo noir theme

Software:
Blender

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Au Revoir

Team:
Olga Epikhina

Discription:
A 2D side scrolling adventure game. You are a femme fatale suffering from depression. You stole something valuable from a criminal authority. Your goal is to escape to Paris.

Features / rules:

In order to alleviate your depression and manage your escape you have to do the following:

• to smoke or to drink alcohol
• to be able to afford a drink or a smoke you need to answer questions from Police, Detective or Criminals
• you need to memorize your answers, since they won‘t work twice with the same character or characters which are connected.

Software:
Flash/AS3

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
On Torment Avenue

Team:
Jack Hoefnagel
Onat Hekimoglu

Discription:
A narrative noir-styled game about a heartbroken detective, faced with an impossible choice...

Features / rules:

• Focus on dramatic light/dark composition
• combination of stylized silhouettes and black & white video footage
• Storyline based on traditional noir films
• Interactive emotional experience
• A walk through the protagonists’ memories
• Difficult, personal choice offered at the end
• Essence of games vs. reality explore

Software:
Flash/AS3

Play the Game: http://jackhoefnagel.nl/files/gamenoir/ 

__________________________________________________________________
RAPID FIRE PROTOTYPING PROJECT
__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Punxatawney Adventure

Team:
Maren Keitel
with Fee Bonny (ext.)
Rafael Wenzel (ext.)

Discription:
A short but challenging platformer about self-discovery and the question of how to keep calm in a circle of frustration.

Features / rules:

• The End is the beginning
• Navigation with arrow keys
• Weather icons influence the way the character moves
• Winning requires to collect icons in the right order

Software:
Flash/AS3

Play the Game: http://elcoino.de/GGJ2012.swf

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
"drop

Team:
Katharina Tillmanns
with Julia Klomfass (music composer, ext.)

Discription:
An athmospheric anti-depressive platformer.

Features / rules:

• you are teardrop that is heavy in weight 
• your goal is to jump the clouds to rise up to the sun

Software:
GameMaker for MAC

Play the Game: http://www.cgnfilms.de/WP/drop-first-beta-of-my-first-game/

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Lumen

Team:
Tobias Kreter 
Roman Jungblut

Discription:
An athmospheric sound and light experience

Features / rules:

• Paint with light while moving around
• collect all five items 
• finally see what you created

Software:
Unity 3D

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Rise Of The Fallen Legions (RoFL)

Team:
Jan Reitz 

Discription:
wo players battle in an arena to destroy the enemy‘s base and defend their own.

Features / rules:

• An 8-bit 16-color demake of multiplayer online battle arena games like DotA and LoL
• Playable with Keyboard, Joypad or even more „true“ with a Joystick
• Combination of very old and simple input methods and more current and complex mechanics, goals and behaviors

Software:
Flash/AS3

Play the Game: http://sordid.de/rofl/

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
Hitler Gopher Party

Team:
Roman Jungblut
Claus Daniel Herrmann 

Discription:

Hitlers is raging! Scream him down, so he stops and becomes a little crybaby.

Features / rules:

• microphone input as controller
• 30 hilarious pre-programmed phrases
• awesome pixel art

Software:
Flash/AS3

__________________________________________________________________

Project title:
The Perverso

Team:
Roman Jungblut 
Claus Daniel Herrmann 

Discription:
The game is to be considered an interactive joke, making use of the well known internet meme „Pedo Bear“ which is commonly used to make fun of porn content.

Features / rules:

• Study on user behavior
• Viral content 
• SWF format for easy accessability through all common internet browsers

Software:
Flash/AS3

Pervasive-Games-Expert Richard Wetzel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT who was instrumental in realizing the first project with our new master students – the 2011 class – mailed me these impressions:

The students were tasked with creating a game using the means of the theater. After my introduction into the history of pervasive games, each student pitched an idea. In the end we decided on two games that had to be developed in only three weeks - quite a demanding task.

The first game – a scavenger hunt with a pirate theme – was designed and staged by three students. A pirate captain introduced the players to their mission and sent them on the search for a precious treasure handing them a fragment of a map with an X marking the starting point. He also entrusted them with a backpack containing a variety of objects that might or might not become useful during the game.

When they arrived at the marked place, the players had to search for a while before they found a second pirate sitting on a bench. He agreed to give the players another fragment of the map if they would bring him a necklace he needed as a birthday present for his daughter.

The players managed to find the necklace submerged in a fountain and hidden inside a small treasure chest which they had to destroy to open. Guided by the new piece of the map, the players discovered a third pirate who again had a small task for them to fulfill.

A very nice scene happened in the middle of the game when the players were searching for the next clue and entered a shop selling live-roleplaying equipment. They asked the shopkeeper about the pirate treasure. He answered that he had no idea, but then he seemed to remember and asked if they were looking for the “Treasure Chest”.

The players enthusiastically nodded – only to find out that the shopkeeper was referring to another shop that used to be in the same place a few years ago.

This type of interaction between players and uninformed outsiders is one of the strong points of pervasive games perfectly illustrating social expansion.

In the big finale, the players had to beat a British pirate in a swordfight that used the insult mechanics from the classic computer game “The Secret of Monkey Island.”

The second game was designed by five students and was centered around light paintings created by using a slow shutter speed on a camera. Performing gestures or drawing objects with a light, an experienced light painter can create magnificent images. The story of the game had the Gods of Olymp wanting to choose a champion who had to proof him- or herself in a series of challenges.

At the beginning of the game, players were led into a room and handed an envelope. A narrator introduced everybody to the story and then asked the participants to open the envelope. Four persons were selected to be the main characters in the game. They formed two competing teams. An actor playing Prometheus created a light painting of an obstacle the players had to overcome, for example a zombie. The light painting was projected large-scale onto a wall and could only be seen by one of the two players in each team who then had to use pantomime to convey the information to his partner. The second player had to react with another light painting countering the danger they were facing. The audience voted for the better team.

Framing the game with Greek mythology worked really well, and the overall atmosphere created by darkness, light painting, the narrator and sound effects made quite an impression. Last but not least the imminent time pressure created by the automated camera for the light paintings assured that the players always had to think on their feet.

Overall, both groups of students created two very distinct games, which were very well received by the players and the audience.

For more information about pervasive games, please read “Pervasive Games: Theory and Design” by Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waern (http://pervasivegames.wordpress.com/the-book/).

But the recent influx of remakes is different. The sources for remakes become increasingly younger. Instead of downloadable titles, the games are being released on physical media, often at full price. The list of recent and upcoming releases is staggering: God of War, Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider, Splinter Cell, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid and many more.

The gaming community receives the remakes with mixed reactions. On the one hand, the remakes are another episode of the steadily worsening creative bankruptcy the traditional games industry is plagued with. Faced with the rising costs of AAA game development, the remakes offer a cheap and easy way out to release popular games at the fraction of the development of new games.

On the other hand, the remakes also offer the possibility for players to re-visit old masterpieces. The best example being Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The two critically acclaimed titles felt always somewhat inhibited by the limited capabilities of the PlayStation 2. The recent HD remake is an opportunity to re-discover what made them so influential in the fist place. At Cologne Game Lab, we decided to invite students to play the games as part of our new format, the CGL Game Club. Based on the idea of a book club, we will meet in a month to discuss our findings.

While the format is designed to establish and hone analytical skills of all participants, the final discussion will be also a good opportunity to evaluate the recent trend in the games industry. Stay tuned for more...

PHONE STORY is officially promoted as "an educational game about the hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing". But in plain words the game is an anti-iPhone game for the iPhone. So it is not surprising that Apple has banned the game from the Appstore shortly after its official release.

I was quick and got to download one of the "rare" copies. Here´s the full report.

PHONE STORY (Attention: Spoiler)

When launching the game, the screen turns into a face and introduces itself to you as YOUR PHONE.

In the typical La-Molleindustria-style, the message is rather taught with the sarcastic hammer than in between the lines. Throughout a variety of simple minigames that are presented, the voice of your phone keeps on encouraging you to "meet the goal". Evil, huh? It´s not that simple.

While you try to be good and enhance your skills, you are being taught about the social costs of you current behavior in detail. After having successfully passed the mission, you are forwarded to the obsolescence mode where you compete in an endless spiral with market forces.

The gameplay is neat and well designed but most of all it´s the idea behind the game that captivates. A great game to make the perversion of turbo capitalism actually touchable - in a double sense.

The release and un-release might have the potential to open a discourse. And I think that is what La Molleindustria is striving for. Beyond the Radical Gamedesign of PHONE STORY the "real" game starts off now that the app has been unreleased again. Unlike the game itself this meta-game remains accessible to everyone.

"The interstitial movies are reminiscent of Julian Schnabel's film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, while the script and, in particular, Anja Jazeschann's performance as the young woman offer a tender insight into the frustrating vagaries of lying in a hospital bed, waiting to recover from a life-threatening accident. It's territory rarely touched upon by video games. ...

Trauma is too slight and too leftfield to attract a wide audience, but it offers a fascinating vision of game, film and still life meeting to create something both fresh and familiar. Its creator's aspirations may lie close to a filmmaker's, but this is a very different kind of homage to cinema than that espoused by Rockstar's Housers and their many imitators." 

So check them both out, the review and the game.

Martin suggested the use of a very interesting tool: Ren'Py. It is an open-source engine for interactive novels. It's surprisingly simply but offers an amazing level of customization due to it’s Python heritage. Ren'Py allowed our students to concentrate on the storytelling instead of the technical implementation.

The project was extremely difficult nonetheless. Each of the three teams chose a very different approach with it's own unique challenges. There were a lot of experiments, lengthy discussions but thankfully also profound insights. There are plans to do a public exhibition of the final games, so you will be able to see yourselves. Stay tuned!

In collaboration with students from their animation class Prof. Meyer Hermann and Prof Bramkamp did an amazing job by bringing up an impressive games and speaker lineup.

Early birds that we are, @m_boesch and I got to do a little interview with Paolo Pedercini of la molleindustria. Here are some essential bits about his game design approach.

More info about the SPIELSALON: http://www.spielsalonkassel.com/de/

This represented a challenge for us. Only 1 week seemed like preciously little time for such a wide range of topics. Also, we were concerned about the language barrier. The courses at Cologne Game Lab depend a lot on the active participation of all involved.

But very soon, it became clear that our worries were completely unfounded. We were stunned by the active commitment and creativity of our guests.

The program we prepared consisted of various lectures, a visit at the studios of Turtle Entertainment and a couple of hands-on workshops in paper prototyping and Flash game development.

In Germany, China is often associated with bad publicity from the main-stream press. There are frequent reports of German products being copied. What we witnessed in the last week was exactly the opposite. All course participants showed an enormous creative potential. In just a few days, they came up with completely original and refreshing game ideas. On top of that, we were blown away by the attention to detail and out-of-the-box thinking apparent in the execution of the paper prototypes. Considering how most of the participants had little or no experience with games, this was a truly extraordinary result.

It was an exhausting but incredibly productive week for the participants but also for us at Cologne Game Lab. We have gained some key insights insights into the organization and execution of Workshops. We also hope we could inspire some of the participants to look more into game development in the future.

Although it was not part of the project´s framework, all students decided to design for the iOS plattform. Their argument: When it comes to serious games the touch surface of iPhone and iPad enhances the effect of immersion. As a player you literary take those world changing challenges into your own hands. 

At CGL we are looking forward to see the projects being developed further on. - Maybe as the students´master thesis?

THE GAMES

Nature - A game by Linda Kruse

You are NATURE, planet earth, upon which mankind has spread like an evil virus. Get prepared for the great payback: Create your own natural desasters to hit human mankind hard. Cure yourself by finally destroying them. - In the end it is all a matter of your own survival.

With her classy strategy based world simulation for iOS, Linda turns tables and puts the player in the role of mother earth who - in order to survive -  has to destroy mankind. "Nature" is a sarcastic comment on the current international climate politics.

Visuals by Fabricio Rosa Marques

Spirit Spots - A game by Achim Fell

Follow mysterious Prof. Malmström and unlock the essence of the secret bottles with Malmström-Demudolator. With their magic power you can dive right into the history of any touristical sight and see this place as you would have never imagined.

Spirit Spots is a crossmedia infotainment application for tourists. Using augmented reality elements Achim´s game lets users experience a city´s places of interest in a playful and sensous way.

Visuals by Fabricio Rosa Marques

Monster World - A game by Marcus Bösch

Travel with monsters. Learn about the world. That is the claim of a gaming and learning application for 5-7 years old kids. The game is designed to give players a creative and fun understanding of cultural differences. Marcus´promise: "There will be no boring stuff, no cute illustrations just because parents like them. No blatantly obvious educationa-purpose. No wagging finger. - Trust us. We have monsters."

Visuals by Claus Daniel Hermann

Pocket Steve - A game by Benjamin Gögge

In the role of a famous TV life counsellor (e.g. Super Nanny) you are responsible for the future of unemployed Steve. You better give him good advice, feed him well and make him pay his bills at the right time, otherwise he will end up broke, homeless and devastated. But beware - no matter how much you care for your unshaven Tamagotchi, he is eventually going to hate you.

With Pocket Steve, Benjamin features a satirical social role play game about prejudices against people who receive social welfare.

Visuals by Claus Daniel Hermann

At the IGF booth we luckily met last years IGF winner Andy Schatz who was very enthusiastic about this year´s submissions and the future of Indie Games.

Andy Schatz // Monaco

We had the chance to talk to some of the finalist and winners of the 2011 IGF competion directly at their busy booths:

Jens Nilsson // Amnesia

Brian Provinciano // Retro City Rampage

Jeroen D. Stout // Dinner Date

Peter Brinson // The Cat And The Coup

Richard Flanigan // FRACT

These and other questions related to Serious Exergaming will be investigated next week during the two-day conference "Sportlich spielend lernen: Lehren und Lernen mit Exergames?". The organizers (full disclosure: I am one of them) have assembled quite an impressive list of keynote speakers and panelists.

Let me just mention three of the English speaking participants:

• Ian Bogost, author of "Persuasive Games" and expert on exergaming, will deliver a webnote live from Georgia Tech.

• Eric Brown of Impact Games will talk about Peacemaker and Play the News and about designing Serious Games that are still fun.

• Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen of Serious Games Interactive and author of "The Educational Potential of Computer Games", will talk about lessons learned in the first ten years of the serious games movement.

The conference is taking place on March 16 and 17 in the ifs international filmschool, Cologne.

A detailed program can be found here.

Attendance is free though space is limited. You can register here.

So here is goodbye from San Francisco with the last (sentimental) episode and an interview with Game Design legend John Romero:

Björn Bartholdy meets John Romero: