Dropped Babies - Game Developing
Hey,
We started a small self-publishing game developing group few months back and now we've come to the point we have made five prototypes for people to judge! During this week, one of these will be chosen for final production and our first game will be ready this Christmas.
Prototypes:
Check out our blog! http://mentalmoustache.blogspot.com/ Here's a short quotation straight from there:
Facebook link for those who are interested: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108152499239589&ref=ts
Thank you in advance,
Heikki Koljonen
We started a small self-publishing game developing group few months back and now we've come to the point we have made five prototypes for people to judge! During this week, one of these will be chosen for final production and our first game will be ready this Christmas.
Prototypes:
Check out our blog! http://mentalmoustache.blogspot.com/ Here's a short quotation straight from there:
Go to our blog, try out the awesome prototypes and most importantly, give feedback!Heikki wrote:What is Mental Moustache and what is it that we do?
The independent game developing group, Mental Moustache, was born on the 7th of June 2010. We started the production by making a few game concepts and prototypes, each taking two weeks to develop. Now we have five on our hands and it's time to choose which to produce during the last four months!
Why such a short production period? We're working at a Game Development Hatchery in Outokumpu, Finland which gives us six months of free time to develop our business idea. Basically we have that much time to get good base income for Mental Moustache so we can make more games in the future.
We wanted to take our time doing these game concepts and prototypes thoroughly so we can work effectively the whole production period. All our prototypes have gotten signifigantly better than the one before, so one can predict how awesome the final product will be.
We chose to work with Unity3d Game Development Tool, perhaps our programmers want to tell you more about it. Our first game is ought to be released by Christmas 2010.
Facebook link for those who are interested: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=108152499239589&ref=ts
Thank you in advance,
Heikki Koljonen
Replies
Little Armored One is a puzzle platformer starring an interdimensional Armadillo. Includes one premade stage and a full level editor. Check it out and give feedback!
I fell off the platform a few times.
Nothing in the world seemed to respond. As this is not the early 90's with a stack of 3 and 1/2inch disks in a box on the carseat while I pore over the manual while my mom drives us home, I'll be damned if I am going to scroll down and read your directions. Seriously, this is a webgame: I can and will close the window as fast as I opened it.
If I'm going to play some random game linked on a messageboard, it's value/interest should be immediately apparent. Presumably you can flip the world around or manipulate it so you can go around in some kind of Marble Madness redux but I'm not interested enough to see it happen.
Ninjas Vs. Pirates I closed immediately after loading the title graphic, but before the game loaded. I did not know what the name of the game was because it was not clearly legible from the thumbnail posted on this page. The whole Ninjas/Pirates and yes, Zombies thing is years behind the curve, I am nowhere near interested in anything called Ninjas Vs. Pirates (and haven't I played that already? Somewhere?)
Finally I tried Fusion Pilots. I like the sexy girls on the load screen. Where did they run off to? Now I'm in 7,545,245,2453rd clone of this kind of game and it's bringing precisely nothing to the table. Why not make it a game about those sexy pilots trying to get their grav harnesses strapped in over their enormous busts.
Your logo is borderline offensive/offputting, reeks of very little thought given to presentation. If I'm meant to laugh at your Dropped Baby, try and abstract it a little more, hopefully less fetal in appearance? The way it's curled up and colored orange just makes me think about abortions. Just what I want to think about when I start up a casual webgame. Abortions.
By FAR this is your best one of the three. Please expand on Little Armored One, I loved it. It was kinda-like Portal. Edit: It would help people understand it better if you animated the map rotations.
The other two games were multiplayer, so I couldn't enjoy them as much. Fusion Pilots might be ok if you developed it as a single player game - but the top-view space fighter game has been done to death.
Well, no need for me to type my response, because Gauss pretty much covered it all. The one thing I was going to stress was your company name/logo. Dropped babies? I don't see why you would take a name like that risks putting people off to begin with.
Sorry, but all three games really didn't do much to hold my attention, whether it was the gameplay or the visuals. The only one I played for more than a minute was the armadillo one, frankly because I was trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. And like was said above, why an armadillo? Given the environment, you could have a little alien dude in a hamster ball or something. That game has the most potential though.
I agree about the name, but it wasn't as bad as the logo...
As for the armadillo, I like the originality - but you need to expand on it. Give us the option of unrolling the character, doing more involved movements like shimmying along ledges and jumping, catching, and climbing up them. This can be a really fun game if you put more effort into it.
We did model the Armadillo too but didn't have time to texture or animate him yet. Final product would have at least some idle animations and talking to Non-Player Characters in un-rolled form.
This is a web build of a future standalone game. Not supposed to be played in browser in the end.
Well that's your personal opinion. I just don't think there's anything cooler than ninjas and pirates. Anyway if this game is already made, please link it and we'll check it out.
Game has features that stand out from other shmups. Sadly they didn't make it into the prototype - it being our first one and all. I'll try to make a post about each game concept next week that tells their key features.
Might be good idea to polish the logo a bit yeah. We did make it and the blog during protyping, but next week we should have time to look more into how we represent ourselves to the public. One more time: The game is not supposed to be a casual webgame but a standalone PC game.
Thank you for your feedback.
I have to agree that the web build doesn't have the most intuitive controls, but I hope it doesn't put testers to quit it before they realise what the game is all about.
Thank you for the great ideas! Some of these were already planned but have to put others on paper too and give them some thought.
Plan is to choose one out of our five prototypes during next week, start it from scratch and focus on it for the next four months.
I'm looking to BE a game designer, so I will post an example, banking on the fact that I have many more ideas that I feel are good, and I am confident there's someway I could prove this was my idea if someone made it, I will still post it.
Originally designed in mind for the Android or Iphone platform, but this version is converted to pc.
I think this has an example of some key game design elements you are missing in 2 out of these 3. A goal.
So silly gravity gimmicks: primary
PLAYER'S ENTIRE INTERACTION WITH THE GAME WORLD: secondary
??????
It seems like a recurring them in your rebuttal of gauss (who has actually done this shit for a living)'s post is that your prototype doesn't include the part that will make the game fun. What the hell is that about? Prototypes are there to give you a proof of concept, not to let you execute on 1/5th of the concept and use it as an excuse for your product to suck. If you haven't implemented the core fun part of the gameplay, the 'hook' to keep the player having fun, why the hell are you showing a game demo?
Also the dropped babies name is horrible and invokes imagery of 12 yearolds who just discovered southpark was funny.
But respect for what you guys are doing, good luck.
fixed
Pirates vs ninjas actually had some fluid controls, I can see myself playing a platformer or fighting game with controls like this. That is, if there were interesting platforming/fighting mechanics put into the game
I don't think the company name and logo are going to do you any good... I'm personally not offended by it though.
This day and age, if you have to "explain" your game, you already failed to capture the user. Here are a few crits that may be helpful:
- your company name does nothing for you, and it will prevent your company from ever becoming mainstream or publically successful.
- your games have nothing new, find something new and explore that.
- pirates vs ninjas was a XBLA game that failed miserably.
- your current games do not generate interest, so move on. If you like a game and the audience does not, then the game is for you alone, so do it as your hobby. Don't expect you can educate people about your game.
Educating an audience is expensive and time consuming.
Cheers and good luck.
Straight up, top down shooter was bland boring and there's a million. Same for ball rolling clone #3943201. The ninja game had nice controls but it was far to precise: eg. the mid air kick has to pulled off at just the right moment to hit and that was fighting against noone. The controls are fluid but the movements could be expanded on (wall jumping, swinging from objects etc.) The attacks are very stiff and focused, they need to be more flexible and versatile.
Really though, you should try and come up with a concept that isn't an archetypal SHMUP game/fighting game/ball puzzle.
Crazy Ideas are free and a dime a dozen. You should get together with someone you can bounce Ideas off of and go nuts: you play spores which you must guide into animals heads where they burst creating more spores; you are a mechanical spider that scrambles around a spaceships hull repairing guns whilst under attack; you play an enraged rhino that has to escape from an underground station wrecking as much as possible! Go nuts and make it fun!
if you start putting nice looking art into prototypes, people are going to start critting your art, and probably because it's a prototype you've made it *half nice looking because hey, its a prototype. this makes the art critting even worse..
art crits are not what you want at all at this stage, or theme crits like 'ninjas and pirates are boring'.
edit: of course themes are important, but really you could reskin this as anything vs anything you like at a late date, if the gameplay is fun. also setting themes too early can hamper your creativity because you start thinking 'well, a ninja or a pirate wouldn't do 'x''
i did a double take at the super sexy girls in the shmup because why on earth are you spending that kind of time on the *loading screen* of a prototype??
anyway, here's my tips:
make placeholder art and make it obvious it's placeholder. it doesnt have to be ugly and spoil the atmosphere, just simple and does only what it needs to do (like the level in ninjas and armoured one)
do plenty of playtests with real people, that you watch over their shoulders (and don't interrupt them to say they're doing it wrong). people don't play your games how you think they will. I'm pretty sure if you did this you would have seen people falling off the level time and time again in armoured one and giving up.
do focus on making interaction with your game appealing. this is different from spending time on the arwork, and has a bigger effect on enjoyment. eg- the feel of landing a blow on or killing an opponent in ninja v pirates: there is none at the moment. the gravity transition in armoured one: it should work smoothly and when the player is moving full speed, at any angle as long as they go over the relevant block
with each of your prototypes ask what is the main thing you're trying to prove.. is it 'do people like our art style'? -probably not, so don't put stuff in there which is going to get people answering this question. you can do that with static images seperately, and probably with less effort
check out this article, it is super useful:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml
edit: I'm going to echo fearian's advice too, mix up the gameplay a bit: if you do a shmup it needs to be really different, like geometry wars was when it came out, or ikaruga.
however, I also think that you can take an established genre and just do it super slick with a nice twist, and still get a strong positive response, a la super meatboy
Reminds me of how Rooster Teeth was originally called CockBite, and then they realized that if they started being serious and looking for investors and such that the name would hurt them.
Those guys strike me as super immature douchebags, but they make awesome tutorials so I can't complain.
I highly recommend you change your name to "FFS" or something incorporating it. Short for "Five Finnish Students".
And you still get your humor. Without it making gauss think of abortions.
Edit: Damn. FFS is already taken. You might be screwed.
Hahah. Yeah that's how it must seem. We actually have list of key features like that example of yours but just failed to post them.
Eventhough the prototypes are mostly made for our own use and training, we wanted to share them with everyone for critique - which we seemed to get, thanks everyone.
We definately take all critique seriously, don't worry. No wonder we hadn't heard about Pirates vs. Ninjas, oh my god - a dodgeball game. If we chose NVP we sure would have to rename it.
All that is on the list for final game already. We couldn't manage to make the wall jumping mechanics to feel good for the prototype so we left it out - and yes: fighting must be slick in a fighting game and needs alot of tweaking, testing and implementing.
The spore idea actually sounds like something we ruled out before starting Little Armored One, heh. I'm liking that spaceship repairing spider one though! Too bad we're now done with concepting and it's time to make a game.
Good point! Didn't even realise this before your message. Will definately keep this in mind for future prototypes. Thank you.
We will use this when we test out the features of our chosen game during next few months.
Hahah, guess what? That was the first thing I showed to my team before we even started the whole thing.
PS. "Dropped Babies" is now dropped. Our new name will be revealed at the start of next week along the prototype we choose to produce.
5th: Exostar
Description:
2.5D Science Fiction Hack-n-Slash game with RPG elements.
Key Features:
Completely unique skill and statistics system never before seen in a platformer.
Various quests, random generating levels, weapons and armor with scaling cooperative play mode to provide plenty of replay value!
4th: Hellbound
Description:
First Person Survival Shooter where one manly angel goes rampage in Hell.
Key Features:
Huge array of heavenly weapons, firearms and power-ups ranging from the Crusifier to Holy Water Super Soaker.
Arena-type shooter featuring the seven layers of hell with all imaginable beasts and monstroities.
And!
As promised, we changed the name to something (hopefully) less insulting and off putting:
Positive feedback, wow.
There's now a poll on site about "Which one of our prototypes would you like to see as a completed game?", seems like Exostar is winning.
PS. Could some admin change the name of this topic to "Mental Moustache - Game Developing" please?