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Birth
I was born in the same year as Shrek 2's release. -
UNO
My parents always played board and card games with me as a kid, but the game we played the most was probably UNO. I still play it every now and then with them or my friends, and I even made my own similar card game and got it printed.
Mattel, 1972, UNO
Image retrieved from https://www.playstation.com/en-au/games/uno/ -
Junkbot
The first video game that I can remember playing was Lego's Junkbot, which was a puzzle-platformer on lego.com. From looking back at screenshots of the game, it looked pretty basic, but I remember thinking it was really cool at the time. I still have a Lego figure of Junkbot that I made after playing the game for the first time.
Lego, 2001, Junkbot
Image retrieved from https://en.brickimedia.org/wiki/Junkbot -
Dragonvale
My first device that wasn't a family computer was an iPod touch, which my parents gifted me with Dragonvale preinstalled. As it was the first game I played that wasn't on a website like Coolmath Games, it has stuck with me for a long time, and I still enjoy park simulator mobile games to this day.
Supercell, 2011, Dragonvale, Backflip Studios
Image retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2012/03/app-review-dragonvale/ -
Angry Birds
A few months after obtaining my iPod, I installed Angry Birds Space, and soon downloaded most of the other games in the series. It was the first series that I created my own game and character concepts for.
Rovio, 2009, Angry Birds | Rovio, 2012, Angry Birds Space
Image retrieved from https://www.droid-life.com/2023/02/22/angry-birds-classic-is-going-away-because-no-one-likes-the-other-angry-birds-games/ -
Minecraft Lite
My first Minecraft experience was watching a family friend play a modded version of the game, and I soon downloaded the Lite version on my iPod. While this version of the game was very bare-bones and you couldn't even save worlds, it was the spark that led to my love of game design. The following year I bought the paid version of the game, which was better than the Lite version, but didn't have the majority of features that PC had. -
Minecraft Java
After playing Minecraft on IOS and Xbox for a while, I got my first laptop, and bought Minecraft Java edition. This quickly became my main version of the game to play, and was the reason I became a PC gamer. Though I never stopped playing Minecraft, I began to mod the game during its resurgence in 2019, and started creating my own mods shortly after.
Mojang, 2011, Minecraft
Image retrieved from https://www.xbox.com/en-AU/games/store/minecraft-deluxe-collection/9P4VML1WR91N -
Card Wars
Adventure Time's Card Wars was the first trading card game that I played. I played it on my first iPad, and bought the physical cards, and although neither are made anymore I still play them to this day. The game hooked me in due to Adventure Time being my favourite show at the time, and opened my eyes to the world of trading card games.
Kung Fu Factory, 2014, Card Wars
Image retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_Wars -
My Singing Monsters
I downloaded My Singing Monsters as it looked similar to Dragonvale, but while the two games have many similar game mechanics, MSM is a very different game. While I have drifted away from Dragonvale over the years, I always find myself coming back to MSM, and it even inspired me to create my own game, which I'm currently developing in Unreal Engine.
Big Blue Bubble, 2012, My Singing Monsters
Image retrieved from https://www.bigbluebubble.com/home/games/my-singing-monsters-series/ -
Bloons
I was introduced to the Bloons series through Bloons 5, which I played at a friend's house during an AFL grand final. After becoming addicted to the game, I created my own game based on it for a game design course in 2022.
Ninja Kiwi, 2009, Bloons
Image retrieved from https://www.wwgdb.com/games/bloons_td_5 -
Destiny 2
While I had played the original Destiny with my dad a few times, I never really got into it since we had it on the Xbox and I was becoming more of a PC player. On my birthday however, I was gifted the second game, and while I didn't play it much at first, I've ended up playing it quite a lot with my friends on PC. Destiny 2 helped me start playing games of different genres.
Bungie, 2019, Destiny 2
Image retrieved from https://store.steampowered.com/app/1085660/Destiny_2/ -
Dungeons and Dragons
I joined the D&D club at my school with some friends, and we found that we quite enjoyed the game. We decided to keep playing outside of school, and now that school has ended we have played every week and are continuing to do so.
Wizards of the Coast, 1974, D&D
Image retrieved from https://techraptor.net/tabletop/news/wizards-clarifies-one-dd-third-party-support