Jonathan Grant
I’m a game developer living in Seattle. I’m currently working as a Producer/Designer at a startup focusing on connected toys and electronic games.You can email me at jonathangrant <at> gmail <dot> com.
Theme based on Thought Cloud
by Heather Rivers
-
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Sandy’s Theme, by Aaron Jasinsky
One of the best things about working on casual games is that the smaller scope of the game means that as a developer you can get deeply involved in every aspect of the creative process.
When we made Scrubbles, everyone on the dev team wore multiple hats. We wrote the story, auditioned actors for the cut scenes, and gave creative direction on the music - all while also creating the code & art that went into the game. This is typical on small games like Scrubbles, and is one reason why so many hardcore / retail developers are interested in the casual market.
Aaron Jasinsky created all the music in Scrubbles, and I loved every piece he made. The song above is the theme for one of our boss battles and the creative direction went something like, “This song should sound like an Ozzy / Lita Ford collabo.”
Some of the Scrubbles developers still listen to the game’s music today, while they are hard at work on new games.
-
Alley Insider names the five most addictive Facebook apps
And Scrubbles (Bubble Town) is number two.
Witness the power of my fully armed and operational score: (183115)
-
Scrubbles (aka Bubble Town)
Over the past few weeks, a little game called Scrubbles (also known as Bubble Town) has been getting a lot of buzz on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Scrubbles has an interesting history - developed as a game for college-age adults, released to a market dominated by 50+ year old women, condemned as a failure, now finally released to its market and reborn as a hit.
Developing Scrubbles was tough, and taught me a lot of lessons about game design, development & publishing. I don’t really want to do a big Game Developer Magazine style Postmortem, so I’m going to explore some of these lessons in later posts.
Scrubbles was developed at Oberon Games (now I-play) by a small Seattle team. The original team was:
Cara Ely - Producer
Jeremiah Whitaker - Art Director
Jeremy Bilas - Programmer
Jonathan Grant - Programmer
Rob Rix - Production AssistantOther contributors included Scott Bilas, Aaron Jasinsky, Chris Hargrove, Chris Casey, and Son Vardy.
The game was collaboratively designed by everyone on the team which was a bumpy ride. At the end of the day we created a wicked fun, addictive game that everyone loved.
Everyone loved it that is, until it shipped … but that’s a whole other post.
Since the release of Scrubbles as a casual downloadable in June 2006, Oberon Media has ported the game to both MySpace and Facebook. Scrubbles is the #1 single-player game on MySpace, and one of the most popular Facebook apps on the site.
Enough talk! You must play:
