Nye Warburton - Creative UX, Games and Animation

Bloopco - Biofeedback Gaming, 2016

Way of the Bow, PulseCat and Prototypes

In early 2015, I was prototyping game mechanics that I believed had the potential for anxiety reduction. My technical partner Josh Reynolds and I, began prototyping a biofeedback game mechanic. We discovered that by detecting heartrate input, we could recognize a deep mindful breath. This became the basis for bloopco, a health game company. We began building our first game for the Apple Watch, called Way of the Bow.

With medical consulting from Sarah Lopez, a USC and Kaiser-Permanente physician, and art concepting from Bill Green, we were able to complete and launch the basic game on the Apple Store in the fall of 2015.

Later, I pivoted the company and the product to play to a high performance athletic crowd. Indiviual sports like golf, tennis and biking were begining to use mindfulness and breathing as part of their work out routines. 'PulseCat' was to be a system to help them integrate into their routine.

My research is still in progress. You can still download 'Way of the Bow' for Apple Watch at the link below. Or below is the link to the video of my demo of PulseCat.

Agent Kickback, 2015

My love letter to platformers

I grew up playing dozens of platformers on a commodore 64. I've been dreaming about a side scrolling open world platformer, since I was a kid. When I felt I had gained enough confidence, I began to build this dream game about a secret agent, who had to uncover a government alien conspiracy. The mechanic of the game was based on a fun "Kick Back" that the main character had when he fired his plasma cannon.
I thought it to be a a puzzler, where Agent Kickback had to use alien tractor beams and his kick back weapon to navigate the board. But of course, I needed alien monsters too. I built in the HTML5 engine construct 2, and created a system for fractioning and designing levels, as well as a map and mission system.
I particularly like the art style as it felt creepy and alien like but still fun and cartoony. The awesomely talented Jennifer Kes Remington did the track, which I feel hits the mood of the character.

After five full time weeks of work on the project, I hit a wall. The enormity of the project became overwhelming and I decided to put it on the shelf. Despite not shipping it, I feel it was one of the most educational game development experiences of my career.
You can play the abandoned web prototype by clicking the link below. You will need to play on a desktop, as I didn't write mobile support.

Commander Cluck, 2012

A proceedurally leveled adventure platformer.

Commander Cluck was my first real game that was designed, developed and deployed. Starting with a (now fairly classic) endless runner mechanic, I adopted the simple run to include a jump with a flap 'joust-like' descent. I created a super space chicken to match the character's mechanic and created a world of bad guy aliens, called Zorcanians, for him to squish.

Though I had development and producing help from Kiran Rao and X-Dev studios, I struggled to find a methodology to create and design a proceedurally generated leveling system. Eventually, I figured out a modular system for balancing the randomization of the tiered platforms Cluck jumps on.
You can download Commander Cluck for iOS on the App Store at the link below. You can also view my game design document for the project.