MochiLand: The Making of BioGems

BioGems: “The Making Of”

Introduction

BioGems is Mochi Media’s first in-house game, which can be found in the Mochi Media games catalog. It’s a puzzle battle game in which space pets fight to protect their planet. By matching gems on a board, the player gets his pet to attack the opponent, defend itself for a while, regenerate some health or energy, or fill up its Rage meter.

Building a Team

My name is Dominique Ferland and I’m the game designer of BioGems. Before I joined Mochi, I worked on console games for about 4 years in Montreal. My title was never clear – something of a mix between an artist and a game designer. Growing tired of large-scale projects, I started making games in my spare time. The last game I made is the gamer trivia title, Geek Mind, which put me on Jameson’s radar for a Mochi in-house title. As soon as Jameson made an offer for me to start a development team and make fun games, I said goodbye to my old job!

CEO and co-founder of everything Mochi, Jameson Hsu is the best boss in the world. His vision for games is pretty simple – making awesome games he’d love to play. As we shared our love for games and discussed our game ideas, it was clear that we’d make a good creative team. As you’ll see in this post-mortem, Jameson’s input in the design and in the production really helped keep BioGems simple and super fun.

As Jameson and I were developing our puzzle game idea, we realized we would need a super programmer to join the team – that’s when Jameson found Nico Tuason, Master of Flash. Based in the Philippines, Nico has been making games and other Flash projects for years. He really impressed us with his little indie gems, Desert Moon and SolarMax, which really showcased his creative programming skills. Each time he’d add something to the game, it would be super polished, animated and tweaked to perfection. And he’s just an awesome dude.

Brian McBrearty, musical genius, joined in a bit later in development to add all the bleeps and bloops, the loud gem explosions and the awesome music. He did it all with such ease and awesomeness that it was kind of scary. Brian has designed sound and music for tons of films, games and other media – check out his blog for all that craziness.

Enough about us, let’s talk about the game! [...]

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