Rawkins Games

Well, it took a bit longer than I expected but Dolphin Up is finally coming out on the Nintendo Wii U eShop in North America on February 5, 2015!

Publishing a console game was a difficult and challenging experience. It feels great to have done it though; childhood dream accomplished! If you have a Wii U, please check on the game on Feb 5. And if you don’t have one yet, come on! This is the time! I’ve got your system seller right here!

If you are unfamiliar with Dolphin Up, or it’s predecessor Dolphin Olympics, check out the official Wii U trailer below, or visit the Dolphin Up official website for more info. The game is also already available on iOS, Google Play, and Amazon if you prefer to play it on mobile, but you’ll be missing out on some new content in the Wii U version, including a new level (Jungle Valley), a new playable porpoise (the Pacific White Sided Dolphin), Miiverse integration, and more.

I’m happy to announce Dolphin Up will be releasing later this year on the Nintendo Wii U eShop! I’m currently targeting a summer release date, but as this is my first attempt at releasing a console game I don’t have a definite timeline.

Dolphin Up for Wii U will feature everything that is currently in the mobile version of the game, but optimized for play on TV and the Wii U gamepad. When I first made Dolphin Olympics 1 and 2 I always dreamt of playing them with a controller on a game console. I can definitely say I am not disappointed, it feels great! I am also working on integrating Wii U online and social features so that you can chase your friends high scores and post/brag about it on Miiverse. 

Dolphin Up for Wii U is being developed using the Nintendo Web Framework, which allows games to be developed for the Wii U using web technologies such as Javascript, CSS and HTML.

Dolphin Up is now available on the Amazon Android App store!

It is the same as the Android version currently on Google Play.

Dolphin Up v1.7 is slowly accelerating towards your mobile device. The iOS version is currently under review by Apple, while he Android version is going live and may already be available on your device. This is a relatively large update. Changes include:

• Completely re-done user interface with larger buttons and full-screen menus. I have been meaning to do this for quite awhile and finally bit the bullet and went through with it. Hopefully it makes the game easier to navigate for you.
• Added a “Quick Play” button to the title screen. You can now start playing right away without choosing any options. The game will automatically fire up a game with the options you selected last time you played.
• Online scoreboards now show the top 100 scores instead of just the top 10. You can view additional scores by swiping the scoreboard listing downward (or is it upwards?). Local scores are currently still limited to 10.
• On Android, improved support for tablets and larger screens. Graphics in the game should look pretty decent now on everything up to a Nexus 10 (2560-by-1600), though unfortunately I don’t have one of those here to test with.
• Other minor bug fixes and tweaks, primarily to the scoreboard.
• In somewhat less happy news, Santa Dolphin has left the game until December. But cheer up, now that I have this whole “adding holiday themed Dolphins” thing figured out, you may just see more of them throughout the year!

I will update on Facebook and Twitter once the update on iOS is officially live. I also have some bigger news about the game on the way, but wanted to get this update out and done before posting about it. Stay tuned!

The More We Get Together was made at the Vancouver Global Game Jam 2014, by myself, Luke Pacholski, and Drew Miller, with music by DJ Dain and voicework by Jacob Burgess. It’s an online multiplayer shape building games where each player must work with other players to build an assigned shape.

It was built in HTML5 using the Phaser framework on the client side and Node JS on the server side.

More details are available on the official Jam webpage. You can play the game online at http://lab2.sluglab.com:9999/, but make sure you get some friends to play with you as there isn’t much to do by yourself (you each need to play on your own computer). The game works ok on modern mobile devices, but we didn’t really have time to optimize it.

Deserted Space was created for the Full Indie Game Jam 2013 by myself and Drew Miller. It was built in HTML5 using the Three.js javascript library. We built the whole thing in 48 hours.

Our goal was to build a scrolling 3d space shooter using only javascript and ThreeJS, taking inspiration from classics such as Star Fox, Space Harrier, and Star Wars Arcade. It is the first 3d game I’ve tried my hand at, and I’m pretty happy with the results!

There are still some features missing that we would’ve liked to add, and a few things we didn’t even think of until we were packing up to head home (shockwave bomb!).

The game is best played in a modern, WebGL supporting browser (the newest version of Firefox, Chrome, or maybe IE should do the trick). There is also gamepad support!

Play it here

I’ve released a new paid version of Dolphin Up for Android on the Google Play store, with a few new features.

• No ads!
• Includes the new content that was recently added to the iOS version (Orca and Glacier Lake).

It’s priced the same as the iOS version ($2.99). From here on out, I will strive to keep the two versions identical as far as features go, with the exception of a few platform specific features (mainly Game Center support on iOS).

The free version is still available for the near future as Dolphin Up Lite.

While in the process of upgrading the mysterious back end of my website, I found a few old projects that I had neglected to post on the site. I figured I should get a few of these up here in some form. The biggest and probably the most recent is Goldbergboros, the game I helped to develop at the Vancouver Global Game Jam 2012, along with Daniel Conde, Nathan Chow, José Romero, Rachel Teo, and Martin Schüller.

The theme of the jam was Oroboros, the snake eating its own tail. Our concept was a game in which you designed a Rube Goldberg machine that could run infinitely, or at least as long as possible. Hence, Goldberg + Oroboros = Goldbergboros, or, possibly the most difficult to pronounce game title imaginable.

While the result is a little rough around the edges (especially in the loading time department), it works pretty well. I’m immensely proud of what we managed to build in only a couple of days. Hopefully I’ll find the time to revisit this game in the future and polish it up to something a little more playable.

Dolphin Up v1.4 is now live on the Apple App store. New features include a new playable porpoise (the Orca), a new playable Habitat (Glacier Lake), and some minor tweaks to the game center score submissions.

Dolphin Up v1.3 is now available on the App Store. Includes support for iphone5 and 5th gen iPod Touch screen resolutions, and some small bug fixes.