I’m going to spend the next week in Chengdu for work. For the occasion, I made this animation paying homage to Little Ninja Brothers on NES.
![]()

I’m going to spend the next week in Chengdu for work. For the occasion, I made this animation paying homage to Little Ninja Brothers on NES.
![]()

I’m moving to a new apartment on january 2nd. I’m packing my stuff right now, so updates might be a bit sparse for the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are some test sprites I did a while ago for a pixel version of my now-defunct Galactic Police shooter.
![]()
Happy Holidays!

Since I didn’t describe too much what Ninja Senki is about, I decided to post a small update on the status of the project. I don’t want to say too much either because I hate when developers or gaming websites spoil everything about a game before its release. It’s fun to have some surprises left! Here it goes:
So, what’s going on?
The art of the game is all done. I might still modify some small stuff though. Most of the code is done. Right now, I’m coding the two last bosses. I still have to build all the levels (which is the biggest part left to do) and integrate music and sounds.
For what platform is it?
PC only for now. I might port it to MAC later.
What’s the development tool used to create it?
Game Maker 7. I also used Matt Thorson’s Grandma Platforming Engine as a basis, which is super simple and works really well to build a platformer quickly.
Did you play Ninja Robot Haggleman (Retro Game Challenge) on DS?
Yes! I played it on the japanese version of Retro Game Challenge which is called Game Center CX. This is a huge inspiration for the visual style along with other classic ninja games like Ninja Jajamaru Kun on NES.
It’s too violent! Can you remove the blood?
C’mon! The explosions of little red balls are cute!
Release date?
I hoped to release it before Christmas but I’m already working more than full time at my day job, so realistically it might be in January. Miyamoto once said something like: “A delayed game is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever.”
That’s it for now!

Here’s the trailer of Ninja Senki. I’ve been working on this platformer almost every evening (night) of the last few months. Ninja Senki features a blue ninja, shurikens and revenge! The game is going to be a bit hardcore, so be warned: it will require skills. The amazing music for the trailer was composed by Yan Thouin.

In addition to my fantasy breakout game project, I’ve been “secretly” working on a small action packed ninja game. The development of the game is going very well. In fact, it is pretty much feature complete. However, I still have to build a bunch of levels, create some new enemies, debug and do more polishing before releasing it. I hope to release it before Christmas. Here are some screen shots:
![]()
I should also upload a video in the upcoming weeks.

During the past 8 years, I’ve worked on various kind of video games and I’ve realized that storytelling is very often a major weak point. The main problem is that game developers often tend to forget that video game is a very different medium than cinema even if they share some similarities. By wanting to convey a “great” story, game developers/scriptwriters often end up with a story shoehorned in that breaks the flow of the game.
Cinema is a passive medium that solely focus on conveying a story, while video game is an active medium that requires the input of the player in order to progress (interactivity). The purpose of this post is simply to share what I think works well when telling a story in a game (in action games, to be more precise). I’m no scriptwriter, so my point of view is of a game designer. Here are my thoughts:
In conclusion, Heather Campbell nailed this principle in her excellent review of Super Paper Mario in issue 64 of Play Magazine: “Think back to Super Mario 3. There’s a story in that game, but it’s never told to us – we experience it with Mario, by adventuring through levels with him.”

Here are some rough sketches I did when we were designing the enemy robots for TMNT GBA.

Today, Ubisoft officially revealed that they’re producing the video game incarnation of Scott Pilgrim. This is actually the project that made me go back to Ubisoft. I feel very lucky to be working on this game. I can’t reveal anything about it right now, but you can read more on these websites:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/100/1006885p1.html
http://kotaku.com/5324654/scott-pilgrim-vs-your-game-console