Bottle Rockets
By James Earl Cox III
Bottle Rockets is a music video(game). As such, rather than take the spotlight for itself, the game was created to add emotion and meaning to its featured track. This is accomplished by a set of constraints: the game must be inspired by the song, the game must conclude when the song does, the song must be the only audio within the game, and the game cannot interrupt the song.
Outside of its music video(game) aspects, Bottle Rockets is a game about a mother and her daughter. Created during the “Women are Too Hard to Animate” Jam, which came to be during the Assassin’s Creed Unity controversy, this game’s only two characters are both female. More so, the player neither sees defining gender traits of either, leaving their appearance up to the player’s imagination. In this way, the same space-suit the player character dawns could be worn by a male, making the gender arbitrary and proving that there are no complications from animating either gender.
James Earl Cox III is both a graduate student in the IMGD MFA program at USC California and a digital wizard. He holds BA degrees in Creative Writing, Mass Communication, and Interactive Media from Miami University of Ohio. James has created over 50 freeware games, exhibiting at numerous venues including IndieCade, DIGRA, EGX and the Smithsonian. His games can be found at www.SeeminglyPointless.com. Currently, he is completing a challenge of making 100 games in 5 years. His twitter is @thethebatman and yes, he would love to watch The Room with you.