Peter.Daniel.Berg

Noli perdere tempus lusoris

I'm a game dev and writer from the USA. I like retro technology, linguistics, and deep worldbuilding.

Sub to me on YouTube and itch.io. And, if you like my work, you can support me on Ko-fi.

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."
— Francisco Goya

Without You Here

Without You Here is a song by Logan McCarthy and Peter Daniel Berg. I'm really proud of the work Logan and I put into this angsty emo rock track.

Without You Here on YouTube
Without You Here on Spotify
Without You Here on SoundCloud

Shards of the Sun

Shards of the Sun is a 3D first person exploration game about collecting solar panels and shooting bears in a futuristic city. A team of five people - Ben Bass, Ben Lewis, Brandon Washington, Joel Landy, and Peter Daniel Berg - developed this game in spring of 2016 at Montgomery College, with music by Xisle. The game was praised for its art direction, mechanics, and cinematography. In particular I'm glad that using such lo-fi graphics to make sure the game would run on my old laptop led to a really vibrant and slick aesthetic.

There are plans to continue development on this game, which at this stage would likely comprise a complete overhaul. A more complete version of this game would expand the map, introducing additional levels and goals, and putting focus on a tighter gameplay loop that requires balancing the two core mechanics of precision archery and vertical collect-a-thon. Currently the best strategy is to double tap each bear point blank. Not as fun as it could be.

If you'd like, you can download the latest build. It's a little janky.

Monoceros

Monoceros is a 2D sidescrolling platformer about unicorns on a spaceship. A team of six people - Anthony Jacinto, Edoardo Martinelli, Mark Chidi Ukah, Victor Ukah, Mooki Allen, and Peter Daniel Berg - developed this game in spring of 2015 at Montgomery College. The game was praised for its art direction, scope, gameplay and level design.

There are plans to continue development on this game, which at this stage would likely comprise a complete overhaul. There are so many indie games that are sidescrolling platformers with just one minor mechanical twist (I mean it's most people's first indie game if they don't just remake Flappy Bird...), and I'd like to think I can do better than that. A more complete version of this game would place greater emphasis on navigation puzzles than on platforming and the emergent interaction of a relatively sparse set of abilities.

You can download the most recent build, which has some quality of life improvements.

Neo Jinya

Neo Jinya is a cyberpunk 2D JRPG set in a retrofuturistic dystopian Virginia, presently on hiatus. It's based upon the Neo Virginia Facebook page, created by Rhys Davis and Miles Turner.

September 2018 lighting test
another video on the process
January 2020 update video
June 2020 update video
April 2022 pathing test
Delfi minigame test footage

Sea Level Slow-Up

Sea Level Slow-Up is a cooperative educational environmental board game about the tragedy of the commons. In this game, three countries of the polar ocean - the U.S., Canada, and Russia - must work together to achieve carbon neutrality or all of them will be flooded.

This game was created by Benjamin Hemphill, Dustin Snowadzky, and Peter Daniel Berg in our Board Game Design class at Montgomery College. Watch our animated two-minute presentation.

This game won the college games category of the 2017 Arctic Climate Game Jam! We were commemorated by the Montgomery County Council on 2017-09-19, presented by Councilmember Craig Rice. It was a lot of fun! You can watch a video of the proclamation and read about it on the MC website.

DAA:SBV

Dead And Alive: Schroedinger's Beach Volleyball is a silly little game planned as a minigame for Neo Jinya. I started with the name and it was too funny not to make. It's basically pong with two paddles on each side. You can play it on my itchio.

The Temple of Agade

The Temple of Agade is an escape-the-room game created by Albert Walderhaug, Chris Blendermann, and Peter Daniel Berg for our board game design class. Players assume the roles of a team of archaeologists who have become trapped in an ancient Akkadian temple by three mysterious votive idols known as the Tertu. The spirits give them puzzles to solve. Players must prove they are worthy to be freed within one hour, before sunset seals their fate forever.

The Temple of Agade has been praised for its focus on narrative and for its interwoven, historically relevant puzzles which make use of custom physical props. Moreover, our game was received well enough by our peers that we considered proposing it to the Rockville Panic Room, a local escape-the-room facility in Rockville. Here's the video Albert made.
"Deadpan low-fi conceptual sci-fi constructed from obscure cultural flotsam and ephemera, scientific phenomena, and intricately-layered in-jokes, and Terry Pratchett wit, where every stray soda can probably has a planned backstory."
— Steven Ostuni, when asked to describe my stylistic hallmarks

The story is the basic unit of the human experience. I do plan to eventually release the stuff I write, if I can stop worldbuilding long enough to finish something. For a number of reasons, I think it'll necessarily be lots of short stories instead of a few long ones. I participated in NaNoWriMo 2015 and 2016.

Fictron

Fictron: The Alternative Fiction Portal is a podcast by Béla Oehser, Izzy Idsardi, and Peter Daniel Berg. It explores strange, unusual, off-beat, new age, or otherwise alternative fiction.

Sub to Fictron on YouTube too!

The Digitree Process

While working at Digitree in Washington DC, I created a 3D-animated illustration of the company's family media collection digitization process.
The Digitree Process is a 1m12s investor- and client-oriented commercial animation taking inspiration from The Way Things Work and HGTV flythroughs, created in Blender and finalized on 2019-07-18. The video showcases the complete process of analog media digitization. The chaos of analog family multimedia takes up space in a house with no easy way to access or enjoy it. The media is collected, carefully sorted, digitized, and then presented back to the family, accessible both in digital format and via archival-grade preservation of the original media.
Still working on new stuff all the time. Never really a moment without some passion project. Even if it's just endless fractal worldbulding. I love movies, I love books, I love music. But when existing stories fail, the only thing left to do is to make stuff - to create something captivating and beautiful. I get my best ideas from dreams and from improving on existing stories. If I'm not asleep, I'm writing, exercising, or making money. The only things that matter in life are money, love, and good stories. Hopefully when the first two someday run dry I'll have accrued plenty of the third.

I love mashups. The grand thesis of mashup culture is that all songs are the same song. The Mouth series is good; Cut Paste & Kill is an experience. If I can listen to three songs at once, so much the better.

Do you like the night sky? Check out my dad's astronomy website, Virgil Observatory.