My Student Games

My video game career started with humble beginnings. Majority of my earlier games were done in school. The following three games are made during my study at the Interactive Media & Games department of the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California.

flOw

2006 Web Browser

FlOw is a game about piloting an aquatic organism through a surreal biosphere where players consume other organisms, evolve, and advance their organisms to the abyss.

As part of Jenova Chen's thesis research, flOw inherits an embedded design of active DDA (dynamic difficulty adjustment), players with differing skill levels can intuitively customize their experiences in the zone and enjoy the game at their own pace. “Addicting” is the most common word its fans use to describe it.

During the first two weeks after flOw was released online, it attracted more than 350,000 downloads. Up till today, flOw has attracted more than 6,000,000 downloads.

Cloud

2005 PC

Cloud is an acclaimed action flight game that allows players to realize their lifelong dreams of imaginative flight, manipulating clouds and creating weather. "A childhood dream simulator" is how many of its fans describe it.

It is about a kid kept in the hospital daydreaming himself fly in the sky, making shapes out of clouds and eventually use rain to clean the world. The game was designed to evoke everyone’s fantasy about clouds and flight, and their best wishes towards the nature.

The game is completed as a USC game innovation lab research project. It had over 500,000 downloads over the internet. And triggered a heated debate of whether video game is art.

Dyadin

2004 PC

Dyadin is a 3D action puzzle game for two players at one time. Each player must navigate their character through the gamespace by closely interacting with one another both in the virtual sense and the real. The game is played on two personal computers located next to each other.

Each player’s screen acts as a viewport to their own world, reflecting the choices made by both players. Each player’s world is overlayed on top of the others, allowing for each player to see the actions of their team mate and to make decisions based on a variety of visual stimuli. 

This is the first student showcase win, we made from the Independent Game Festival at Game Developer Conference.