The goal of Living Art Games

As an indie game developer, my main goal is producing fun games but my secondary goal is to make  the most beautiful and detailed games I can. As the name says, I want them to look like living art. In the case of "Psi," I'm going for a comic book feel for the look and layout of it.

Right now, I'm working on game mechanics, what's "under the hood," so to speak. I'm using the 2D game making engine, Construct 2 and the animation program Spriter. I feel that these two are an excellent combination. During my development process, Mike from Brashmonkey, the developer of Spriter, has been very helpful to me personally. It's great to be using a software and be able to get assistance from the designers! Construct 2 also has a great, supportive community and any question asked on their forums will usually be answered quickly and skillfully. I feel like, luckily, I found the exact right design software for me.

Thanks for reading! Morgan.

The first in-game music for "Psi."

This is a song called, "The Lab." It's the music playing at the beginning of the game. Obviously, in the first movement, I was going for a dark, heavy feel. What else would one expect from a game about a woman with psionic powers against a horde of zombies and killer machines?

https://soundcloud.com/ministermojo/the-lab

My first introduction to the cyberpunk genre

Wikipedia defines cyberpunk as, "a postmodern science fiction genre noted for its focus on 'high tech and low life.' It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order." My first exposure was through the comic book series, Akira. Akira is the tale of a young man, Tetsuo, living in a futuristic "Neo-Tokyo," who falls in with an experimental, secret branch of the government dedicated to producing children with psychic abilities. Tetsuo is a street punk and doesn't work well in the confines of the institution that is trying to help him develop his abilities. The power quickly drives him mad, causing him to wreak havoc in the city and release another child with God-like psionic abilities--Akira.

"Psi" is an extension of my abiding love for the genre. I have also been into the zombie genre since LONG before it was popular. I even wrote a book on the subject, "The Unliving: A Personal Tale of Zombie Apocalypse." "Psi" is a melding of these two favored forms of fiction, in game form. I hope you will enjoy playing it as much as I am enjoying making it!

First conceptual sketch of Psi

This was the 2nd sketch I made of Psi, several months ago. The first sketch was, ahem, not fit for public consumption. When I saw the finished product, I was excited. I liked the comic art feel to it and am going for that in the rest of the game as well. At the time, a friend who was a professional game designer was helping me and we were going to design a couple of other characters but neither one, at least for me, held the appeal of Psi.

Living Art Games logo

Here's the new logo:

Album art

Here's a sneak peek at some potential album art for the soundtrack. Stay tuned!

Living Art Games

Until recently, I never knew I'd be an indie game developer...

For at least a few years, I've had an idea for a video game but I didn't know how to go about creating it. I briefly got together with a friend who had worked extensively in the video game industry but it became obvious that he was burned out and at the end of his rope with programming. After he left, I started researching a game engine that I, a non-programming artist/musician, could effectively use and I came across Construct 2 and the animation program, Spriter. Spriter allows one to draw a two dimensional character and skillfully animate it. It uses a technique called "modular animation" and is very easy to use. Below is an actual animation frame of the mutant zombie, one of the characters in my game.

The game is called, "Psi" and it's about a woman with psionic (mental) powers against a world infested with many different types of zombies and murderous machines. The idea behind my design studio, "Living Art Games" is that the games look like living works of art. I want the artwork to draw the player in and make them feel as if they're playing a comic book in real-time.

One of my favorite games of all time is Diablo 2 and Psi draws some inspiration from that as well as from several other more recent sources. There are many enemies to fight and a wide assortment of psychic abilities to do so with such as telekinesis, pyrokinesis and novel new powers like singularity blade. There are powerful and upgradable defensive skills as well. There will be a lot of room for character customization and many ways one can approach winning the game. The centerpiece though will be the action and there will be plenty of it in the form of combat with mobs of fiendish foes. Psi is set in a high-tech, cyperpunk future where a zombie plague has ravaged the planet.

A little about me: I've been a gamer since when I was around 3 years of age and one of my parent's friends had a console that had 2 or 3 games on it--pong and maybe tennis (the only difference was the width of your bar!), since then, I've played hundreds of games on just about every game console you can think of. I am now putting all of this experience to good use in making my own game. I have hand-drawn all of the characters myself and have already recorded over an hour of music to be used in the game and on the official game soundtrack. I am now in the stage of animating my characters and will soon move on to creating backgrounds and objects in the game.

I will use this blog to post regular updates to the progress I'm making on the game and to eventually tell folks how to get their own copy of the game and the soundtrack. Right now I plan to release Psi on PC and iOS with more platforms possible in the future. Thanks for reading and stay tuned!