#egg ball

[nycmixing]

Cassava Egg Ball with Sour

[nycmixing]

Bakewell Bakery & Restaurant

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Egg Ball

[lazythingcollectionblog]

Fried Potato Balls - Deep Fried Potato Egg Balls(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyXXRNwXqIE)

[itsallaboutmultifandoms]

Sorry for being lazy again but...

I'm trying to surprise my brother with a bouncy egg ball. Does anybody know if every kind of of vinegar works for making a bouncy egg ball or do I need a special type of vinagre?

Never mind, it's working.

[simonabitan]

From Legend: Concept and Intentions

Here is the starting point of a long series of posts about the last project I worked on: From Legend, a 2D beat’em all game taking action in Ancient China. In this first post, I want to talk about the concept of the game that has already been revealed in a previous post – giving more details, of course.

Above: a concept art of the main character Fulin, by Louis Lim.

Our intention was:

To create a mobile beat’em all – iOS, Android, Windows 8 but also PS Vita and more – playable everywhere and by both casual and core gamers.

To get a frenetic gameplay easy to play but difficult to master.

To get a game experience that mixes game mechanics and scenario together in order to create strong emotions.

The player embodies Fulin, a thousand-year-old fox-woman who has mastered the art of masks. It’s a martial art which consists in changing the style of fight as the fighter changes his face. The goal: to cross a dangerous sanctuary to reach Ling, Fulin’s dragon-god, in order to get back what he has stolen to her.

The choice of China wasn’t a random selection. In fact, we wanted a game experience that could allow the player to experiment hardcore perseverance. Yes, perseverance was the most fundamental word of the project, so all the aspects of the game – structure, core gameplay, story and arts – had to fit its meaning perfectly. To unify these aspects, we used a concept known and overwhelming accepted by the players: achievements. In fact, to succeed in performing achievements, the player usually has to repeat normal actions in a game for a long time – to kill 1,000 enemies – or to perform a very hard action during the game – to discover a well hidden secret for instance. Since Microsoft introduced this concept with the Xbox 360, all the industry has adopted it – Nintendo is still an exception! Whatever the case, it takes time so the most perseverant people can unlock all of them in a game. However, they’re not an obligation. Players who don’t want to unlock them can avoid their challenge. The main idea with From Legend is to make them part of the macro experience by linking them to player’s progression.

I exposed the game structure in a previous article about the subject, but let me expose it once again more precisely, because it fits well the concept:

Above: the macro game structure which is a part of the concept.

The structure is simple: during 5 to 10 minutes, the player fights enemies in different arenas, just like in a classic BtA game. When he succeeds in finishing all these confrontations, he can fight the dragon-god Ling – the final boss. The problem is that he’s a lot more powerful than the player who generally loses. When the defeat happens, the player restarts at the beginning of the sanctuary. Fortunately, it’s the opportunity to perform… achievements!

Above: 'to start a game' is the first achievement for easy learning.

In fact, by performing achievements the player can make Fulin stronger. The achievements have different natures and can be performed every time there is a fight. When an achievement is done, a progression gauge increases, then when a segment of this gauge is full, Fulin levels-up and becomes more powerful (max life increased, equipment inventory bigger, new abilities…). Thus, the player has more chances to beat the dragon-god Ling so he can feel he’s getting better with perseverance. If at the beginning a few of perseverance is required to perform achievements, the more the player progresses on the gauge, the more perseverance is necessary.

What kind of achievements are necessary to perform? How the player can perform them? Isn’t the concept too much repetitive? I’ll develop these points in other dedicated posts. The next one will be about the core gameplay – not directly the achievements because it’s important to understand the gameplay to understand how achievements exploit it at its best.

Stay tuned!

[simonabitan]

An Unforgettable First Experience

The first post is always quite hard for me to write because I never know what is the most important to show first. Is it a simple “hi” or just a little text about what will happen next? Maybe both? Well, after careful consideration, I decided to write about something important for me to share: my first experience in the video game industry.

It was a Game Designer job at Egg Ball, a French company which developed mobile video games. And by “mobile”, I mean all devices that allow the player to enjoy “nomad” experiences.  It concerns all types of smartphones/tablets — iOS, Android, Windows 8, but also gamer devices like Sony’s PS Vita. In a word, Egg Ball used to make games that could be played all the time, everywhere.

Anyway, I worked for this company during almost 3 years from September 2010 to April 2013, and it was an unforgettable experience!

  I experienced during these 3 years the same good feeling that we can encounter when we play videogames: the Csikszentmihalyi’s flow of happiness (no sh*t). It’s a state of complete absorption with an activity — not necessarily playing video games — that crushes notions like time or starving. Who hasn’t dropped a big “Oh my god, I’ve played 3 hours!” after beating a huge badass’ boss during a supposed little game session? That achievement means your skills were at least as high as the challenge proposed by your activity — playing a video game in this case. Well, that very good feeling of total involvement, I felt it when I worked for that company.

Indeed, during these 3 years, all the projects I worked on were as big as my skills in game design. Even if my first project was a little match-3 puzzle for children, it was a very good challenge for me to make the greatest game possible. After that first experience of creation, I learnt a lot about my mistakes so my general skills in game design increased.

It was the same for the second project, the third, and so on. Finally, the last project was an ambitious 2D beat’em all game with more complex mechanics, more storytelling moments and more characters to develop than the first little match-3 puzzle. But even if the challenge to create the “greatest” game experience was a lot harder, and even if I had more responsibilities because of my new Lead status on the project, I felt I could do it simply because I wasn’t the same designer as before.

Above: Hamtaro (Match-3 puzzle) vs From Legend (Beat’em all).

Obviously, this feeling of happiness doesn’t mean developing games at Egg Ball was easy. Like many developers, we suffered from our ambition when starting a new project, working hard from the morning to the evening, often night. However, I think it was a good pain, even if I saw the company rise and fall like Icarus because of its ambition. We made games as a team, so we suffered as a team, we succeeded as a team and naturally we failed as a team. All the bad moments, as the good ones, are essential to progress so I can easily affirm these 3 years were positives!

To conclude this first post, I simply would thank the colleagues I worked with and especially the 3 co-founders: Julien Victor, Louis Lim and Nicolas Badoux. Thank you for trusting in me from the first second to the last one.

I won’t forget!

[louishlim]

Egg Ball (2012) (Publish by Bulkypix) : JAZZ: Trump's Journey

Platforming game for iOS/Android/PSVita/PC/Mac platform. 

Winner of the "Game of the year 2012" award by the French Minestry of Culture

"My name is Trump, I'm a jazzman, and this is my story"

You follow Trump in his journey for becoming a famous Jazzman. His trip will bring you in all famous disctrict of New Orleans.For his dream, Trump will have to find other musician for a jazz band contest.

This game is the most famous of our games at Egg Ball, the project was really ambitious and I'm very proud of the results.

We were inspired by the life of Louis Armstrong for the storyline and the work of Disney for the art direction, especially "Steam boat Willie" for my character design. Everything in this game have a vintage traitement, but I wouldn't want to have a black and white game, so I added touch of saturated color for more joyfull atmosphere.

Game info : 

JAZZ: Trump's Journey

Youtube Video :