Band Together, Ipad Game.

I recently Art Directed and Designed my first original intellectual property, “Band Together” a cute and twisted little mobile game that is out now for Apple’s iPad2 and New iPad.

The goal is to rescue tiny creatures called Bandies, so named for their propensity to band together, by waking them up with candlelight and guiding them through thirty intricate cardboard dioramas bristling with homemade traps, such as thumbtack death machines, pencil pits, and rolling baseballs.  The dioramas are designed and constructed by the young tinkerer Michael Sliverstien (nick named “Midge” by the mean kids at school because he has tiny hands).  As the game progresses, players are taken through Midge’s secret journal, which details his experiments on the Bandies.

For the games official launch I also created this little trailer, the awesome Banjo rendition of “Hall of the Mountain King” was created by Simon Hanes.

TRAILER:

 

SCREENSHOTS:

Band Together was released in June 2012 for the iPad2 and the New-iPad, at release we were featured by Apple for two weeks.  The game has since seen a very cool number of downloads and we are currently working on a port for the rest of the iOS market as well as Android and other interesting platforms.  We are also working on new content for the game, one of the biggest gripes from fans is that we need more levels and I totally agree… but until then I wanted to share some artwork so please have a look here to grab some cool wallpapers and Band Together art!

A lot of what I created for this game was based on real world elements, cardboard specifically.  This entailed many hours of cutting and combining various cardboard chunks to build a world for Midge and the Bandies to tell their story in.  I shot tons of reference photos and what you see here are some of the cooler selects from these shoots, formatted especially for ipad wallpapers.

WALLPAPERS:

 

Band Together was initially going to be an iPhone game, however, when the iPad hit the market, I felt a tablet would be a better platform to launch on.  Personally, I am much more fond of gaming on a tablet than gaming on a mobile phone. Tablets have bigger screens, better resolution and can handle better graphics, all of which help to make a better, more immersive gaming experience.  However, core gameplay and game design are always the most important aspects of good games. Is it a fun game mechanic? Is it fun to play?  These are a questions I always ask myself when developing games.  Good game mechanics can be experienced in a very simple way, as people have been doing it for centuries on pencil and paper.

I feel that touch screens and tablet gaming are the future of the gaming industry. Even more strong, is my belief that they are the future of digital artistry as well.

Band Together is out now for the iPad2, iPadmini and New-iPad, I believe it’s only a dollar (at the moment) so go grab it and tell me what you think!

-John

 

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/band-together/

http://www.bandtogetherthegame.com/