Aaron Christensen

Drifting

A VR puzzle game for intro level players.

Drifting was made as a personal 24hr game jam and exhibited alongside the 2417 immersive art experience at the Gem Center for the Arts in Boise, ID.

For this project I had two specific goals.

1. Create three unique puzzles with environmental clues for the player to find.
2. Make the experience as easy for first time VR users as possible.

Because Drifting was going to be shown at an art gala I wanted to create an immersive and dreamlike experience that was easy for anyone to pick up and play. Gameplay is simple, players move around the scene using the oculus touch controllers and any object that the player can interact with is triggered by collisions with the OVR avatar’s in game hands.

Download and play on Itch.io!

• Date: FALL 2018
• Category: Game development/design

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Garden Defender

A multiplayer arcade shooter for Virtual Reality.

Garden Defender came out of a multi-course project wherein I was tasked with designing and creating a gaming experience from scratch as a lone developer.

After several rounds of prototyping I began to design a virtual forest that the player would be given control of managing and caring for. This was intended to create a relaxed and enjoyable environment with the potential of becoming an expressive space unique to the individual user.

When the task was eventually added to create a multiplayer experience out of the game I shifted the project into a multiplayer VR garden that the players must protect from pests while harvesting fully grown flowers for points.

Logic from the original forest was repurposed into the flowers and weeds of the current game. All multiplayer functionality of gameplay and the OVRPlayerController is custom made by myself using using Unity UNet.

• Date: FALL 2018
• Category: Game development/design

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It's Not Me

An interactive VR art experience.

It's Not Me is an interactive experience centered around the art and life of Becka Watkins.

Becka is a Boise based artist who's portfolio deals with her struggle and recovery from bullying, eating disorders, and abuse. She came to us looking for a way to share her art and communicate her story in a digital format.

For this project I maintained communication between our client and the developers as well as providing our team with design documentation and the necessary information to understand the context of each scene and the paintings to be included.

It's Not Me can ultimately be interpreted as a virtual art gallery wherein players can experience the art in the context of where originated during the artist's life. In this way we hoped to bring a deeper meaning to each piece that Becka provided to us for inclusion.

• Date: FALL 2018
• Category: Game development/design

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A Sacrifice for Sldqh'Thiss

Party fighting game for two players.

A Sacrifice for Sludqh'Thiss was made as a submission for the 2019 Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam on Itch.io.

The Theme for the jam was "Only One" with interpretation of the theme being up to each individual team. My teammate Dean Cohen and myself decided to make a fighting game featuring only one weapon that had to be bounced between each player.

My contributions include the majority of 3d models, player sprites, animation, and outlining our initial design goal of a two-player top-down game wherein each player has a dash and variable attack/disarm button based on whether or not they are currently in possesion of the weapon. Check it out now on Itch.io!

• Date: Summer 2019
• Category: Game development/design

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Hell's Canyon Dam

An augmented 360 video experience.

The Hell's Canyon Dam experience was made for Idaho Power and meant to showcase aspects of the Dam and the environmental mitigation that has gone on there in order to preserve Salmon populations in Idaho rivers.

• Date: Fall 2017
• Category: Game development/design

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WWI Recreation for the Earl Museum

Historical Reenactment Experience

The Earl Museum in Boise Idaho came to us wanting a historical experience centered around guns from their collection.

• Date: Fall 2017
• Category: Game development/design

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Sistine Chapel Recreation

VR experience for the World Museum at Boise State

This recreation of the Sistine Chapel was made as an early look at what could be done with the new digitally interactive World Museum at Boise State. Our student team worked to recreate the Chapel and it's frescos as accurately as possible using freely available images from the internet.

• Date: Summer 2017
• Category: Game development/design

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Devout Tournament

Party/Fighting Game in development for PC and Arcade

Devout Tournament is the next stage from the A Sacrifice For Sldqh'Thss prototype made in 2019. Since developing the original piece for the 2019 GMTK Game Jam on itch.io myself and my partner Dean Cohen took the demo to local fighting game players at Spacebar arcade in Boise ID and have started working on new levels and mechanics for a future release. Currently the game is available as an arcade cabinet at Spacebar and will be playable in the near future.

• Date: Winter 2020
• Category: Game development/design

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Frengo

Jam Game for asset building and dialogue work

Frengo is a small attempt at a larger story I would like to tell someday. The planned intro and cast would both be much larger in scale but in this case I wanted to create some assets for future experiments. Every piece of this project was custom built by myself with a little help from google where necessary.

Download and play on itch.io.

• Date: Spring 2020
• Category: Game development/design

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Sleepy Stone

Jam Game - 3d platformer

I made Frengo for a week long game jam on itch.io, the theme of which was parallel worlds. Through that I developed the concept of a game played in the main character's dream with the real world being visible the whole time.

Check it out on itch.io.

• Date: Summer 2020
• Category: Game development/design

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