Conan! - Playstation3 Xbox 360 -

Conan, Created for the Playstaion3 and Xbox360, is an action adventure game created at Nihilistic Software. The game follows the famed barbarian, Conan as he slashes, hacks and rips his way through countless oppressive enemies to gain wealth, power and of course, women.

Lead Combat Deisgner
Senior Animator

Gamespot.com - 7.5 - Captures the Conan feel, Combat is fantastically brutal. "Derivative as it is, Conan is still a viscerally satisfying adventure."

GamePro Magazine - 8.0 - "Fans of Conan will appreciate this game as much as hack-and-slash fans who've never heard of the franchise. It's a lot of fun, challenging without being frustrating and all in all, a great example of its genre."

Conan was the first game that I was credited as Lead Combat Designer. I began work on the project as the Senior Aniamtor at nihilistic software. But during production began designing the feel and gameplay behaviors of combat. The video demonstrates what I had the largest effect on during the production, Combat.

I spent most of my time developing how the player interfaced with the game; how the combat and interactable objects (doors, leavers, naked ladies) would feel when controlled by the player. Coming from the animation department allowed me to create animations and tweak the way the player would not only see them, but feel as well.

The combat design for Conan attempted to bring a level of feel to the player that 2D side scrolling action games would normally bring, to a 3D environment. Games like Castlevania, Double Dragon, and even fighting games like King of Fighters or other SNK and Capcom games were used to inspire the feel of the combat in Conan.

My biggest goal with the combat in the game was to make it feel as real as possible. The player was meant to be able to physically deal damage to his enemies in the most realistic manner possible. Though Conan would do some pretty outlandish things, when the player wanted to take an enemies shield he would literately grab it from the enemy and enter into player vs. enemy grapples showing him either rip the shield from the enemies grasp.

I really loved to add all the physical elements into the animation, showing him hold an enemy by the wrist and grab a weapon ripping it from his hand within the animations, but also to make it feel as fast and responsive as possible.

Overall the project was quite allot of fun and of course an amazing opportunity to work on one of my favorite fictional characters ever created. My biggest regret in the end looking back? It's not nearly violent enough! So I guess I'll have to do one more Conan game before I die, to really do the barbarian the insanely violent justice he disserves.

See a full review and more media for Conan at Gamespot.com