Elements of Destruction hits XBLA
polycounter lvl 18
My third XBLA project I've had the pleasure to work on just came out today and I hope some of you people who play the arcade games check it out. Prior to it I was able to work on Marble Blast Ultra (wewt) and Screwjumper!(eek 
).
We had a wicked crazy development cycle for this project, with everything you could possibly imagine going wrong on it from mid project engine switches to losing a handful of our small team's members. I was doing lead design on this one, but also did a lot of the art like UI design, particle work, all the level design, and making random props throughout such as the tiny vehicles you get to toss around with your tornadoes. It was a great learning experience for me as I was able to really get my hands on scripting towards the end of the project and learned a ton of every aspect of development in general. The small and quite frankly, inexperienced team really put their all into it, crunching almost through the entire project to get something we were remotely proud of.
Alas, the story behind making the game doesn't sell it so I recommend you guys check it out for yourselves. Just to summarize, you're in control of an mad scientist converted into a ball of energy who rips the company who fired him and stole his work a new asshole by using a weather controlling device to spawn tornadoes, earthquakes, and lightning. While the gameplay can certainly start to feel monotonous, we really had a ton of fun fighting for the leaderboards with both THQ's QA and Babel, our contracted localization team. Trying to ace a high score and figure out patterns on how to destroy the first level in under a minute and twenty seconds started to get really fun in free play mode (where you destroy all the buildings in the level as quickly as possible), and making sure you get Gold on every level can prove pretty difficult for anyone who hasn't played through the game a couple times.
So yeah, gimme your thoughts, feelings, and money for the game
Microsoft really knows how to release a game at the right time... thankfully there's no floods of any sorts in our game.
).We had a wicked crazy development cycle for this project, with everything you could possibly imagine going wrong on it from mid project engine switches to losing a handful of our small team's members. I was doing lead design on this one, but also did a lot of the art like UI design, particle work, all the level design, and making random props throughout such as the tiny vehicles you get to toss around with your tornadoes. It was a great learning experience for me as I was able to really get my hands on scripting towards the end of the project and learned a ton of every aspect of development in general. The small and quite frankly, inexperienced team really put their all into it, crunching almost through the entire project to get something we were remotely proud of.
Alas, the story behind making the game doesn't sell it so I recommend you guys check it out for yourselves. Just to summarize, you're in control of an mad scientist converted into a ball of energy who rips the company who fired him and stole his work a new asshole by using a weather controlling device to spawn tornadoes, earthquakes, and lightning. While the gameplay can certainly start to feel monotonous, we really had a ton of fun fighting for the leaderboards with both THQ's QA and Babel, our contracted localization team. Trying to ace a high score and figure out patterns on how to destroy the first level in under a minute and twenty seconds started to get really fun in free play mode (where you destroy all the buildings in the level as quickly as possible), and making sure you get Gold on every level can prove pretty difficult for anyone who hasn't played through the game a couple times.
So yeah, gimme your thoughts, feelings, and money for the game
Microsoft really knows how to release a game at the right time... thankfully there's no floods of any sorts in our game.
Replies
Actually a completely different studio worked on that one and it came out probably more than 6 months ago. I was able to play it and it wasn't too bad if only a little slower than I'd like, the reviews seemed alright for it as well.
man, i want to work on an xbla game
Dammit Brome you're absolutely right but I definitely wouldn't be properly pimping if I didn't say screens or videos didn't do the gameplay justice
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/881/881913p1.html
I'm certainly going to be posting some of the assets I was able to crank out for the project in the other part of the forum... I just have to find which ones I actually like and wasn't just rushing to make.