Description

I am Amicable Animal: part-time lecturer, part-time games developer, full-time tea drinker. I love combining old-school mechanics with minimalist, modern game design, to create puzzling, neon-infused worlds for players to explore. Lately I've been experimenting with alt-controllers, too!

History

Beginninings

Amicable Animal came about because of two things: 1) a lack of chances to code during the day, and 2) a weekly meeting of friends playing local multiplayer games. Inspired by games like Towerfall and Nidhogg, what would become Amicable Animal began, with the singular goal of creating a local multiplayer games to play with those friends at the weekly meeting. After a year or so of working part-time on that game (which is still in the pipeline), it was shown at local Edinburgh indie dev meetups and got a positive reception. That then drove me to create Amicable Animal in order to actually finish and release some games!

Distractions

While the ultimate goal is to still release that local multiplayer game, the size and scope of it quickly became rather overwhelming! So, instead the plan became to release a few small games with more limited scope: a set of arcade games which would eventually become a bundle. Central Limit Theorem was the first of those arcade games.

HJEM

At the end of January 2019, I got the chance to help with the organising of the Edinburgh Global Game Jam event and met some amazing music and audio creators. I decided to try and design a music-based game which would allow us to collaborate and create a GGJ game. The result of this was HJEM: a vaguely sinister rhythm-based puzzle game. We released the game for free a week after GGJ ended, and the response to it has been amazing! See the link below for more information.

SOLAS 128

After the success of HJEM, the developers decided to work together again on a longer, more substantial rhythm-based puzzle game. That turned into SOLAS 128: a rhythm-based, Scottish BAFTA award-winning synthwave-infused puzzle game. SOLAS 128 launched in 2021 to high acclaim, including being one of John Walker's Top Ten Games of 2021 on Kotaku. As this is now being published by Armor Games Studios, the presskit() is here: https://presskits.armorgames.com/game/solas/

CRT7

After SOLAS 128, I was keen to work on a very different type of puzzle game, one which included elements from all sorts of different puzzles. This became CRT7, a dark and mysterious escape room game where players decypher strange computers, unravel modified tape players, and unlock impossible doors. Something has gone deeply wrong in a seemingly innocent basement. Can you uncover what secrets are hiding in the dark when even time and space are against you?

Projects

• Central Limit Theorem
• CRT7
• HJEM