The Face-Off
As I revealed in this otherwise rather plaintive post, we'll be unveiling a new iPhone game in April. So, what's this new game all about? I can't tell you, and it's not because I don't want to. It's because right now, we're actually developing four games. Does this mean that we'll be announcing four games in April? Goodness me, no — There Can Only Be One. And that fortunate one can only be selected through a deceptive, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse.
Or by, y'know, playing them all one after the other.
Up until now, here's what our approach has been with small games: Run Boots Run seemed like a good idea, so we made it. Zoo Lasso seemed like a good idea, so we made it. In both cases, we pretty much just worked on the first reasonable-sounding game idea that we thought of. This is all well and good, but what about those five thousand games lurking in potentia, locked away in our subconscious minds? Sure, four thousand, nine-hundred and eighty-one might be rubbish, but there must be a way to access the other nineteen, right?
So, we brainstormed. I mean full-on, nothing is too ridiculous, have-a-beer-hey-why-not-have-a-couple, shout-out-whatever-occurs-to-you brainstorming. And yep, approximately 4981 horrifying, filthy or just plain bad ideas got scrawled on a big bit of paper. But along with them were a handful of others that really did show potential.
From that set of interesting ideas, we argued our way down to four that we would spend time designing and prototyping. We could have argued our way down to one — assuming that all the unsubstantiated opinions flying around didn't damage the paintwork — but the only real way to know if a game design idea has legs is to play that thing. It's been quite the quadrathlon putting together four game prototypes in the course of a couple of weeks, but it sure is easier to discuss the merits of something that actually exists. And we're not far away from being able to pick the victor.
