Petri Purho


Petri Purho is a Finnish computing science student and rapid game prototyper. He has worked at Finnish independent video game developer studio Frozenbyte. In September 2006, he made a promise to himself, that he "will create a new game every month" based on the experimental gameplay development model. This effort eventually ended in the creation of Crayon Physics Deluxe, which was nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize from the Independent Games Festival in December 2007 and subsequently won this category at the 2008 IGF Awards on February 20. Many of his games are developed for various competitions such as Assembly.

Games

Almost all of Petri Purho's games are created within one week as a project exploring the idea of massive prototyping. Most common element of all games are various bonuses for successful combos and/or chain reactions. His games are created using many open-source technologies, which enabled players to create mods including replacing graphics and adding new levels or music.

Pluto Strikes Back

In this game, the player is in control of planet Pluto, which has attached a big baseball bat to itself. In order to score points, the player must hit the meteors so that they will cause damage to other planets in the solar system. Gravity is involved.

The Amazing Flying Brothers

The Amazing Flying Brothers is a game that is controlled by only one button. The player controls a circus artist, who is performing flying trapeze acts. The goal of the game is to chain various circus tricks on two moving trapezes to get bonus points.

A Tribute to the Rolling Boulder

In a direct flipside of movies like Indiana Jones, the main protagonist of this game is the rolling boulder, whose mission is to protect two golden statues representing idols of fertility. In order to do so, the player must roll over increasing numbers of archeologists, as they try to humiliate these idols by touching them, decreasing the player's honor meter. This game was created for assembly demo party game competition, where it won fourth place.

Crayon Physics

Crayon Physics is Petri Purho's most popular game. It was Purho's tenth rapid game prototype and was coded in five days. It is a slow-paced puzzle game based on rigid bodies physics. The main objective of each level is to collect a star with a red ball. The player is only allowed to move the ball, not the star. It starts out easy, but gets more difficult as the game progresses.

Interviews