PocketCharms was designed as a technology showcase for PacketVideo's streaming MP4 video technology.

In PocketCharms the player controls a good luck charm assigned to help the well-meaning but clueless inhabitants of CharmCity. Here are a few of the characters the player meets.

The player begins as a lowly Grub but quickly evolves into one of four Charm types: Career, Fortune, Love, or Fame.

How the player evolves depends on what kind of advice he gives out during the course of the game. There are no right or wrong answers.

The player gets a unique item each time he helps someone. One of these items must be selected to solve the episode. It's not always clear what the items represent, however.

To find out, the player must watch a streaming video clip for a clue to the item's significance. Players also get a new "fortune cookie" video each day featuring their PocketCharm, to encourage them to come back and play the game.

Below are some of the scenes in the game. Each scene is a custom bitmap generated on the server. Characters appear and disappear from the scene based on the player's actions.

Before and after at the world headquarters of DotBomb corporation...

It took three months for me to write the complete PocketCharms script. There is a lot of situational humor and satire in the game. Here are a few items of interest in the final episode, My Evil Twin:

Professor Charm's evil twin brother turns out to be a well-meaning health food advocate who is trying to overturn his brother's fast food empire with eco-friendly "shrunken head on a stick" soy treats. The Mall Rat character has been trying to kill you since episode 5 when your bad advice on how to handle her boyfriend, Biff, ruined their relationship forever. The benevolent Professor Charm, your idol and mentor, is in fact growing PocketCharms to use as the primary ingredient in PocketCharms cereal. If you let him out, he might reward you...or he might eat you for breakfast! The Out-Of-Work Dot-Com CEO has been trying to kill you since Episode 1 when your bad career advice caused him to lose his life savings. The Angry Grub has been trying to kill you since Episode 4, when Professor Charm passed him over for evolution and chose you instead. Clicking on this portrait of the former president of the PacketVideo Los Angeles Applications and Services Group will automatically increase one attribute of your choice. Clicking on this file cabinet will take you to a secret ISO 9000 Compliance screen. If you fail to comply, you get demoted. Mysterious trashcan fires keep breaking out in the game. Putting them out gives you a bonus to the attribute of your choice. The title of the episode is a reference to a song by They Might be Giants.

All content for the game was created in XML format using the open-source Merlot XML editor. David Brackeen created a set of Java plugins for Merlot that allowed me to rapidly position images within a scene, saving weeks of production time. The entire game took 5 months to produce.

Below is Antonio Sanchez's original concept sketch for the PocketCharms themselves.

Here is my original sketch, doodled on the menu of a Japanese restaurant during dinner, that was the genesis for the game. Note the alternate game names.

PocketCharms Credits

Lead Engineer: Bret Barker Database and Servelet Programming: Don Reed Client-Side Programming and Tools Programming: David Brackeen Game Design: Tom Jacobson, David Collier Writer and Producer: Tom Jacobson 2D Art: Antonio Sanchez 3D Art and Animation: David Kersey Interface Design and HTML Production: Len Srinikorn, Adam Schwenk Voice Talent: Rebecca Cherkoss, Natasha Darnall, Andrew Lanchoney MP4 Encoding: Bob Frye, Kenny Ramirez Quality Assurance: John Henderson, Bernard Samstag

©2002 Tom Jacobson. All rights reserved.