I was completely new to game making when I first attended AIE, I was originally focused more towards writing for film, or editing videos, but I wanted to be more involved with the whole process. When Game Design was suggested, I put my whole self into learning as much as I could, and have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it.
Graduate Diploma in Management (Learning) from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) 2019
Advance Diploma in Professional Game Development, Game Design from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) 2018
Advance Diploma in Screen and Media from the Adelaide College of the Arts 2016
'Entrepreneurial Leadership Award' of the 2019 Graduates.
'Outstanding Game Design Student' of the 2018 Graduates
'Most Impressive Game Project' of the 2018 Graduates. Awarded for the game: 'Escapism'
Happy Haunts Gameplay from The Potts Twins on Vimeo.
A 2D Platformer game about a little ghost dog called Happy. You use ghostly powers to explore, and befriend all types of spooky animals you find in the game. No one is too scarey to be Happy's friend!
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I created Happy Haunts in 5 weeks during my second year at AIE. I designed and programmed most of it myself, with the dog's sprites animated by my sister; Annabelle Potts.
For me, Happy Haunts was a struggle to make. In my intial pitch, I wanted to create a simple game, with 3 main mechanics because I knew I wasn't the best programmer. I quickly found out, that while I could program two of the mechanics with mostly no problems (barking and jumping), it was the howling that really set me back. I spent so much time trying to get the howling to work (It was supposed to telekenetically control objects, but changed into possessing objects) that I wasn't able to spend as long as I would have liked on the actual level.
If I could go back, I would ask for help eariler, instead of trying to do everything myself.
I continued work on Happy Haunts while in the Graduate Diploma (GDML) at AIE. While mainly focusing on the business sides of things, I was also working on characters and concepts in the background. Including a website for the game
Close PageESCAPISM Trailer from The Potts Twins on Vimeo.
A VR Escape Room Game where you escape into film.
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Made during my second year at AIE for Major Production. Escapism was a collaborative project between myself, Annabelle Potts, Sarah Day, and Eric Vuglar.
This was the first time I was in charge of managing a team on my own, being the only designer, and one of the people who initially pitched the game (my sister being the other). But it went well! I scoped the game so that we'd have at least one level complete by the end of Major Production, and without having to go into anyone's freetime to do it. I'm proud to say this goal was achieved.
We all worked together for 16 weeks during class time to create an escape room game featuring logic puzzles, an interactive world, and a ufo-themed claw machine. You go through the level, exploring your environment and searching for the spare gears that will activate the projector and start the film.
It lacks sound effects and music because I was more focused on finishing the level and any major bugs in it, than trying to teach myself sound design. However, I do love video editing and created a Game Trailer to showcase it.
Close PageTravesty Carnival Playthrough Part 1 from The Potts Twins on Vimeo.
A Third Person Mystery and Puzzle game set in a Carnival run by robots.
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Made during my first year at AIE while I was learning to use the programs Unity and Maya. I decided to create a Carnival, and then continued it during the Narrative segment; using Fungus to create the dialogue boxes. My sister, Annabelle Potts, drew the Character Art.
The Story is about this strange Carnival in the middle of the woods. You play as a runaway child who comes across it, and solves puzzles to help the citizens. All while questions about the origins of this place and the robots hints at a larger mystery.
This is only the beginning of a larger story that I wasn't able to finish due to time constraints. I had 3 weeks to make the carnival, and 3 weeks to work on the narrative and puzzle programming.
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A Semi-Isometric Pirate Adventure Game, focusing on Ship Battles.
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Made during my first year at AIE for the end of year Group Production. Rogue Islands was a collaborative project between myself and Tyler Smart as the team Designers. Marko Drca as the Programmer, and Annabelle Potts, Matt Korner, and Georgia Mooney as the Artists.
We were placed into groups and had roughly 7 weeks to create a game together. Deciding on an idea my sister suggested about Pirate animals, and monster islands.
We were all pretty new to such a large time frame and group, and initially over-scoped the project before condensing it into something manageable. I created the map based on a drawing from my sister, but I spent most of my time on the UI and planning out mechanics. I'm happy with the final product, but would have prefered helping out more with perhaps a story or character dialogue, but we ran out of time to create anything like that.
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A Turn-based Dungeon Crawler Board Game.
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Made during my second year at AIE in 5 weeks, Dragon Labyrinth was intended to be both a computer game, and board game, but I couldn't see myself being able to create it digitally, and instead focused on creating the board game version.
I designed and created the game art myself this time, with my sister Annabelle Potts only drawing the Enemy Boss Icons for me.
The game was intended for younger players, 7 and up, but the lengths of the instructions had me altering that to 12 and up. The game was a team-based dungeon crawler, where players would get into teams and work together to earn gold, upgrade their attacks and movement (buying more dice)til they could enter the Dragon Labyrinth and defeat the boss. I still need to play test it more and reiterate the rules a few times, but I enjoyed the game. It promoted team work and simple mathmatical skills.
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'5/6 I KNOW THOSE EYES/THIS MAN IS DEAD' animatic. Using characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and music from The Count of Monte Cristo Musical.
InkPotts is a YouTube Channel my sister and I co-created. Annabelle Potts is the artist and draws all the images for the animatics, while I edit the videos together.
We created it in Janurary of 2014 and as of 2020, we have over 87 000 subscribers.
Together, we've been making animatics for 6 years, while using music from musicals such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and The Count of Monte Cristo, along with characters from the popular TV show; My Little Pony. We have plans for more animatics, and work on them during our free time.
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In the middle of July, while others were enjoying their mid year holidays, I was instead completing my Work Experience at Rheinmetall.;
Rheinmetall is a 'defence contractor', involved in various Simulation Training practices (live/ written/ and virtual to name a few), and reached out to AIE for a student interested in doing some work experience, they were interested in someone who could write narratives for simulation training. I threw my hat into the ring, and was chosen! During the 2 weeks I spent at Rheinmetall, I was given a crash course in how the army works, and asked to write a Non-Linear Narrative Story. Basically a short 'Choose your own Adventure' book.
I had never written a non-linear story before. I enjoy writing stories, but I'd never tried to make a non-linear one, especially one where multiple paths could have different or the same endings. Not to mention my complete lack of knowledge about the army. But I didn't back down from the challenge and wrote three possible ideas before selecting one to branch out and complete, writing it out using a program called Twine.
Screenshot of my Twine Project
After the story was done by the end of the first week (I continued to edit it in the second week), they asked me how I should present it? I decided to use a program called Ren'py where you can create Visual Novels. Thus I created a 'Choose your own Adventure' Visual Novel using images from the Australian Defence Force Art Gallery (which I edited in powerpoint to look like painted pictures) and completed the game by the end of the second and final week.
I learnt a lot about how the army works, how their company works, how a business environment works, and met many nice people who were happy to answer any question I had. It was fun to test my writing abilities like that, I feel confident I could write non-linearly for my own stories now.
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Playable Demo
A text-based adventure game based on the themes of isolation and space.
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txt.venture (imaginative name, I know) was a game I made as a solo dev during the month of April 2020. It was during the COVID-19 pandemic so I was stuck at home and all my plans for the year were having to be pushed back. To starve off the cabin-fever I joined the Adelaide Game Dev's GameJam. A month long jam to help devs have some form of activity or goal during the pandemic. The theme for the jam was "I S O L A T I O N / and Space" chosen for obvious reasons for the time.
I decided that I would try to challenge myself and use the jam as an excuse to develop my programming skills, so I made a text adventure from scratch. Sure there are already programs for text adventures that exist, like QUEST or Twine, but they didn't have the right layout and features that I wanted. Granted I was unable to implement some of those features due to my limited programming abilities, but I created most of the mechanics I wanted, just wasn't able to debug the inventory in time for the deadline.
It is also a very short demo and not the full game. April was a hard month, but I kept busy with projects around the house as well as this game, so I didn't end up finishing as much of the story and game as I would have liked. Even so it gave me a better understanding of what goes into programming a text adventure, and was fun to chip away at. It is by no means finished, and I'm not sure when I'll ever get back to it, but I like it for what it is. I made the art myself, and enjoyed writing the dialogue, the programming had me pulling my hair at times, but was also rewarding in the end.
Playable Demo
A puzzle game based on the theme of Out of Control.
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Made over 48 hours for the Gamemaker's Toolkit Game Jam, it was a team effort between myself and Annabelle Potts. We decided on to make a game about herding cats since that's a phrase synonymous with being 'out of control', and centred it on a security hound trying to herd cat burglars out of the museum.
It was a crazy 48 hours, we had never done such a short game jam before, and only had one computer to use at the time. We had to keep swapping who's turn it was to use it. I was once again testing my programming skills trying to get the cats to go to target locations (the treasures), and getting them to steal and run off with said objects. Since I only had 48 hours most of the programming is broken and doesn't quite work as intended. Still fun to make though, makes me want to join in on more game jams once I have free time. This was also Annabelle's first time making pixel art and I was really impressed with what she managed to pull together in such a short time. She even made a Title Screen image for the game.
The game jam was a crazy time and I don't remember most of it haha, but I really like what we managed to make. Trying to concept, plan, and build a game in such a short time was a lot of fun and I'd love to do it again.
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