Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is a collection of five educational minigames about packing lunch for monkeys. It is designed for preschoolers (ages 2 to 5), teaching them about letters, colors, counting, matching, and patterns. A loveable animated monkey provides feedback as the kids play along, giving tips and cheering for them.

For our first game for the iPhone, we wanted to do something different. Our own preschool aged children enjoy the iPhone, but many of the games weren't really taking advantage of the platform or offering an appropirate interface for the age group. MPL isn't bogged down by menus which may be confusing to the players, instead each game flows right into the next providing a seamless experience for kids. Buy it now.

HRmageddon is single or multiplayer turn-based strategy game where players wage war over the territory in an office -- fighting under the fluorescent lights for every cubicle they can claim. Players hire their own specialized team of employees, take over nearby territory, expand their power, and destroy their rivals in brutal business-themed combat. Each employee has a unique set of powers and abilities -- e.g. the Manager can heal with a pay raise or motivate others, the it guys can secure the area with his 'firewall of fire' or trip up his rivals with a 'server crash'.

Players win the game by capturing a majority of the cubicles in the office or by eliminating all of their competition

In Heartpounder we set out to create a casual, accessible, and addictive game for The N.

Heartpounder offers 20 levels of visceral heart smashing action. Players need to break enough hearts to beat each level and proceed to the next. The game uses the Box2d engine which gives the player a fun and predictable physics-based reaction to their shots -- hearts tumble into each other and cascade to the ground and shatter. We upped both the drama and the humor of the game by making each of the hearts a dynamically animated character who reacts to the gameplay -- getting worried when the breaker is near, and scared when they start to fall. Heartpounder was a big hit with the players, getting rave reviews and 5 star ratings.

Avatar University was developed as a sequel to our award winning hit game Avatar High.

For Avatar U we started with our proven Sims-like design -- the player controlling the daily lives of a school full of students. The target player was older than before, so we aimed for a more sophisticated presentation with AU: older students, a bigger school, and a stronger focus on relationships highlighted by a facebook-like page for each student. Student AIs dynamically interact not only in the game world, but comment on each others pages and manage their own friends lists. AU also includes more directed play than its predecessor with a deep character development system where the player can develop students skills by doing quest-like assignments.

Campaign is a game which mixes the U.S. Politics with a turn based tactical combat system. Players choose their favorite presidential candidates, build a staff of ruthless aides and storm across the country rallying supporters, raising cash and slugging it out with opponents. The political setting provided us with some entertaining metaphors to work with -- e.g. money serving as 'mana' that can be used to cast 'spells' like the Attack Ad. Various political jargon (mud slinging, hatchet jobs) provided some good/terrible puns to use for attacks.

We also created a collection of charts that record which candidates are winning based on games played, mimicking political polling charts & results.

For our first multiplayer game for The N we looked to board games for inspiration. We wanted a turn based game that allowed time for users to interact socially and wasn't heavily dependent on the net connection. Players in Trendetta are essentially playing a PR game for their favorite trend. Players place pieces along communication lines representing the internet, TV, and word of mouth. As they claim territory, they build points for their trend. Players take their turns at the same time, bringing urgency to the turn based gameplay. Players can also court celebrity endorsements, cash infusions, and bring down opposing trends with the 'scandal' piece.

Each game is tied to a larger metagame -- the more games won for a trend, the higher that trend moves up the charts.

Drive Hard was designed as a promotional game for the new Die Hard movie. The goal was to create a fast paced action game that was accessible and challenging.

We worked with our friends at Ted Perez to rapidly develop this under a very tight deadline. Ted Perez came to THUP with an art direction and a game concept, and we provided game design refinement and full development. Given the short schedule, we did some liberal genre mixing to get the job done. The result is part Spy Hunter, part Space Invaders -- it's a vertical scroller with plenty of enemies bent on destruction. An aggressive AI provides a steady stream of explosions, keeping the game nicely in line with the movie

THUP's goal was to create a game that captured the excitement and conflict of a new relationship. We wanted to avoid the game becoming a 'choose your own adventuer novel' of dialog trees, so we abstracted the most dramatic moments into an easily accessible card combat game. As players explore the world of The Hook Up, they gather secrets, rumors, and facts about the characters in town. When a conflict arises -- the player fighting to keep their boyfriend, trying to learn a secret, trying to sabotage a rival -- they use the information they have gathered as 'cards'. The more devastating the secret, the more powerful the card.

The Hook Up was a huge success when it launched, creating the largest traffic spike in the history of The N.

O'Grady is a quirky half hour cartoon on Viacom's teen network The N. In each episode, O'Grady's characters are beset by their town's "Weirdness"

Using this anything goes premise, THUP created a casual, addictive action- puzzle game featuring the return of O'Grady's clones.

Clones Gone Wild mixes classic arcade action and puzzle game strategy into a package that's immediately accessible to a casual audience. By capturing O'Grady's locations, characters, art style, sound clips, and off-kilter sense of humor, Clones Gone Wild rewards fans and introduces O'Grady to a new audience.

We decided to use Moesha's (and our teen audience's) focus on personal relationships as an anchor for Moesha: Reunited's gameplay. At its core a "falling blocks" game in the same vein as Tetris, the action in Moesha: Reunited is an abstracted exercise in mediating problems between the show's characters.

The game's hexagon-shaped pieces fall in different colors and occasionally feature squabbling characters from the show. By matching a character with blank "Issue Blocks," and then connecting the other character, players build bridges between the arguing pair, making the blocks disappear -- and earning points in the process.

Avatar Prom is a genre-defying game that lets The N's primarily tween audience act out its prom fantasies. By understanding our audience's still-rosy view of the prom experience, THUP cast Avatar Prom's players as members of a prom committee, with outfits, decorations, and ultimately grumpy attendees to worry about.

Avatar Prom's gameplay borrows heavily from tactical RPG combat games, but with all the swords and sorcery bloodshed replaced with non-violent, socially intense actions. Players flirt and slow dance rather than hack and slash. In the process, THUP chipped away at assumptions about what genres are appropriate for girl gamers. Given an interesting setting, great art, and engaging gameplay, female gamers will enthusiastically play a game about tactics and statistics.

The Wire The Game (TWTG) was launched to promote the 2nd season of HBO's acclaimed drama, The Wire. Aware at the time they had a sleeper hit on their hands but afraid new viewers couldn't keep up with the complex plot, HBO wanted a simple game to get the word out, introduce the characters, and telepgraph major plot points from the first season. With only a month for development and a broad demographic target, HBO had already decided on simple Battleship-inspired gameplay. THUP's job was to add a few twists to the familiar board game concept and to integrate The Wire's settings and characters. Using Flash's just-released support for full-motion video, TWTG rewards players with clips from the show.

TWTG was selected as a Macromedia flash site of the day.

Asked to create a game that embodied the mission of Viacom cable network The N -- helping pre-teens explore and discover who they are -- THUP came up with Avatar High.

Players take control of a simulated high school full of characters they can name after their real friends. From there it's a completely open-ended experience. Players assume an all-knowing perspective on Avatar High's world of cliques, academic and social pressures, and where to sit at lunchtime.

With a style inspired by the old-school pixel art of The N's message board avatars, Avatar High gives players a sandbox to act out situations in their own lives, meddle in the lives of their characters, or just sit back and watch.

Kookels the Clown is a beat-em-up side scroller created for Bluemountain.com, the popular eCard site.

Kookles the Clown was a highly successful foray into gaming for the e-card giant. The design and scenario meshed with the all-ages, whimsical style of Bluemountain while providing fun, challenging, and compelling content for their users.

Back in 1998, shortly after the release of seminal PC game Half-Life, THUP team members were committed to creating a fresh, free add-on (mod) to the popular game. Science & Industry (S&I) was the result. Using Half-Life's run-down cold war era industrial setting as inspiration, THUP created a game that cast players as security guards and rival shadowy corporations. By grouping into teams online, S&I's players have to "recruit" (read: hit over the head and kidnap) the opposing team's scientists to meet their own team's quarterly earnings goal.

S&I was an early example of THUP's "question assumptions" approach to game design and was honored with inclusion in Valve Software's first annual Mod Expo and was awarded 5 stars and named 'Mod of the Month' by PC Gamer UK.