Making Mobile Games

Two years ago, I started a full-time job as a Mobile UI Designer with Pocket App Ltd. With a games design degree under my belt and no one at the company with games industry experience, I seized at the opportunity to upgrade my position and within a few months I became Games Producer. Since then I have worked on many exciting and challenging mobile projects, both game apps and standard apps with gamification design.

All of our projects are produced specifically for a range of clients, including some big names such as Panasonic and Square Enix, so I'm restricted on the graphics I can share on the web. However, there are some sneak peaks on my new portfolio website, www.alxbanner.com.

As much as I love the challenge of creating exciting solutions based on a clients brief, I am eager to work on an original indie game before I hang up my gamepads. Whether I'm lead designer, UI/UX designer or a character designer, I really don't mind what role I have. The most important thing is that I have a talented team to bounce ideas off and collaborate with. I've already been in talks with some cool developers so watch this space!

Red, White and Blue: House of Cards

Addicted to House of Cards and cannot wait until season 3. This started off as a doodle on my Samsung galaxy note 10.1 using Sketchbook pro, but then I got a little carried away :) Much prefer the version with harsh strokes and an absence of colour as it better conveys Kevin Spacey's ruthless character and is in line with the title of this post.

Coding for Dummies: Enter Playmaker

Playmaker is a visual scripting tool for use with Unity. Highly recommended by UK developers, Ninja Theory (when I attended Appsworld '13).


A great article over on Gamasutra provides inspiration for any of those games designers out there who don't have strong coding skills: Suck At Coding But Make Games That includes me!

My Visit to PlayJam

Headed over to PlayJam London offices on the top floor of Centre Point tower. My mission was to pick up a couple of their new android gamepads, GameStick, so the we (Pocket App Ltd) could test (read 'play') it and give feedback and ideas. 

Easy to forget how awesome current generation mobile games can look and play on a big screen.

Sketch on a Plane

A couple of biro sketches while on the plane to Sweden. I stumbled across the bearded guy in a magazine. Think he's a music composer. Totally forgotten his name :/

Monetisation Funnel and Pyramid

Funnel and Pyramid concepts that show how to successfully monetise your game and game business.

Game Dev Inspiration

Lovely story from a Ukrainian breakdancing games developer - Inspirational.