Context

It's been year and a half I play video games on a frequently basis, almost everyday.

Usually, I don't consider hobbies that won't bring me value and help me growth over time. But I found this is the case with games. Beyond the pure distraction side it offers, I realized this industry is a truly inspiring domain that can be linked and actually be part of our expertise domain. As browsers and devices progress toward more powerfull capabilities, we can think more and more about implementing advanced visual features and even games themselves.

My game development experience

This is what I've done 2 years ago with a friend building Smart Prisoners: we shipped this small narrative puzzle-game with 3D cut-scenes as an Android app, with Nuxt.js + Cordova.

Though I probably won't use the same tech if I ever had to work on this kind of projet again, it has been an amazing experience.

Actually you can still find the page on the app store, or check its marketing page.

We found inspirations from various other games we played, such as Ruiner, and Portal 2, both speaking of game concepts but also visual interfaces.

Inspirations

I keep playing, and experience various game types, here are the latest I really enjoyed:

• Cyberpunk 2077: the famous and amazing immersive adventure in a full featured next-gen environment
• Observation: an indie game with a unique gameplay that take place on space station with lot of interfaces
• Road 96: a very colorful and punchy narrative adventure with playful call to actions
• No Man's Sky: a wonderful space in an ever improving open world thanks to constant releases over time
• Control: a very strange and catchy adventure taking place in an extraordinary complex lore
• Observer System Redux: a small creepy narrative with an outstanding artistic direction
• Death Stranding: unique concept of walking simulator with inspiring sci-fi interfaces

Playing all of these titles trigger poping ideas in my head regarding animations or visual layouts I could partially implement in my project.

As a conclusion, I can say this hobby can be seen as benchmarking an infinte well of ideas, that I intend to continue in the future...