During the May holiday break a few students took on the challenge to create a game in 24 hours (!). My colleague Sean kicked of the event at our 'makerspace' with 3 random generated themes to be used for inspiration (1 at least): regression, x-ray and affection. Three student worked solo on a game and … Continue reading May Day Jam 2019 – Impressions
Tuesday afternoon 2 April we had another playtesting event at our study, supported once again by the study association Glitch. This time we had around 25 students showing up, most of them looking for feedback. On top of that we had a few external guests: a VR game company that wanted input on their VR … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill Playtesting April 2019
In my work as a lecturer at the Hanze Applied University we focus on the digital games industry. To showcase more where this industry stands in the north of the Netherlands, they made a video with interviews of many participants in this field: students, company owners and lecturers. If you want to know more about the … Continue reading Impression Northern Dutch Digital Games Industry
Premise of Heroes is the title of a creative storytelling game I am developing. A few years ago I started fooling around with an idea: a roleplaying card game (rpg) in which players create interesting characters and have an adventure. In rpg’s I always liked coming up with characters and the defining part that makes them … Continue reading ‘Premise of Heroes’ – Developing Blog
On Tuesday 22 January we had a rather impromptu playtesting session. The moment was right after the project deadline of 1st year students and just before the deadline of 2nd year students of our CMD study. So the turnup was a bit lower than usual. Still there were multiple groups getting feedback on their prototype. … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill January 2019
A year ago my game concept Capo Della Mafia was published by 999 Games in the Netherlands. It is my first published design and in this post I reflect on the design process and the game itself. If you can read Dutch, in this article the publisher wrote about their in house process of development … Continue reading Designer diary: Making Capo della Mafia
On 11 December 2018 we had another playtesting event at our CMD multimedia study. Students presented their digital school projects, their personal work and even a tabletop game going for crowdfunding on Kickstarter right now (Epic Story of Blank and Blank). Some students assessed each other's art and shared tips. And some graduate students had … Continue reading Looking back: Test & Chill December 2018
Together with Study Association Glitch we had another Day Jam at our CMD study with Game Design students. Make a game in 24 hours! This time it was making an analogue game with very specific theme challenges. All teams managed to present a playable prototype after a day, some with created unique art. It is … Continue reading Blog – Impressions Day Jam November 2018
Once again we had a playtesting afternoon. Students of all study years were present and many concepts and prototypes were demonstrated. It was cool to see many types of projects: group work, individual work, some well developed, others still rough work in progress, digital and card games. We will have 2 playtesting events again next … Continue reading Blog – Impressions Test & Chill November 2018
As a lecturer, game designer and organiser of playtesting events it is a balancing act what to focus on. The paid job has priority of course, as other live events and responsibilities. Game design has gotten some attention, and coming year hopefully more so 🙂 (enough ideas in the works for that). The Game Design … Continue reading Blog – The Guild Expands
Arjan van Houwelingen 