Squibble and the games of MassHabit

Role Designer: game art, animation, level design, marketing materials

Format Mobile games for iOS and Android

Reach Over a million downloads of Squibble

The Squibble cinematic trailer, shown without sound.

How it started

My friend, Eric Roy, an incredible developer, and I had worked together for years when we were laid off at the same time. We were both interested in mobile games, and between us we had everything we needed to build them. He wrote the code behind the scenes, and I made everything you could see. So we started a studio.

Approach

I was the studio's designer. I made the game art and animation, designed the levels, and produced the trailers, app store art and marketing graphics. Working on phones meant every character had to read clearly at a finger's width, and every animation had to stay light enough to keep the game running smoothly on the hardware of the time. I also made the music for all three published games.

Squibble

Squibble is a physics platformer about a small, tentacled creature finding his way home. You touch any surface to fire a sticky tentacle, then swing, bounce and slingshot through the level. The whole game depends on how Squibble moves, so we put a lot of time into making him stretch and snap in a way that felt real under your finger, and looked real on the screen.

Fifteen seconds of play from four different levels.

Shoal

Shoal was inspired by Eric's interest in flocking algorithms. You control a school of little fish by tapping near them, to wrangle them, and help them navigate around obstacles and enemies, such as pufferfish, jellyfish, and anglerfish. Your goal is to reach the end of the level with as many of them as possible still alive and together. I designed the artwork for this game, including the characters, backgrounds, scenery and menus.

Shoal: key art, and fifteen seconds of play.

Pond Defense

Keep them frogs outta your pond! You control a turtle in a small pond. Frogs rain from the sky, and you must deflect them before they hit the water. The game is a single level with endless gameplay, that gets harder the longer you survive. Your score increases over time, with every deflection, and froggy explosion.

Pond Defense: key art, and fifteen seconds of play.

Ransackers

Ransackers was never published. The idea was an infinite side-scrolling runner game, built on a theme of cartoony 80s horror, style and music. I designed this concept art for it. There are four characters (a zombie, a vampire, a pirate and a ninja).

Title art, with the four characters.

Outcome

Squibble passed a million downloads and was reviewed 9/10 by Wired. MassHabit ran for about five years, and it's where I learned to design for things people hold in their hands and touch.