Starting two years ago with the NLGD Game Development Rally 2006, and finishing second place, 2008 was the year of victory. With fresh new ideas on how to conquer the first place and win the big prize. This time it was a winning game.

The assignment was to develop a game for the foundation Cliniclowns, with a target audience of children with a long term disease. One of the big requirements was to make a game that should have a high happiness and accessibility value. With the core gameplay originally invented by Richard van Tol, playing a 2D platform game with just one button, which makes it also much more accessible, I started my way for developing one happy game: Project IceCube!

The core gameplay idea is the player, that moves automatically, and jumps by pressing a button. If the player reaches a wall, it bounces and change direction. Some other platform elements asides of jumping are offcourse ladders. So how to fix this with one button? Well, Richard van Tol had the solution already working in his tech-demo. Just pressing the button while standing at a ladder. While climbing the ladder and pressing again, you will change direction. It is all that easy. After a little practice of playing with just one button, it feels like second nature again. Why using so many buttons anyway?

After some three months of hard work the game was finished. Just in time for the deadline, as usual. After uploading the gold version towards the NLGD in May, the game was playable online at Uqudos.com. At this moment everyone could vote for the best game of the three finalist, including Project IceCube, until June 17th. At June 19th the winning game was announced: Project IceCube!

Collecting the prize, shaking hands with one of the game industries pioneers: Ralph Baer (creator of Pong), was a honour and a great experience. On the left of the picture is Seth van de Meer, head of NLGD, on the right is Ralph Baer, and in the center offcourse, the winner of the NLGD Game Development Rally 2008.

And for a little bit more info about the game and development of it click here .