Fledgling Videogame Developer

After releasing Battlecards Android game, we started working on a game concept that was invented couple of years ago. At that times, I created quick&dirty prototype for testing basic game mechanics. Also, main characters were also drawn then. But for some reason we did not continue to work on it. The working title of this game has been "Fly Attack". But after some not-so-careful thinking we decived to rename it to "Fly Assault!". At least there are not too many games with same name in Google Play. :) Game itself is very simple and easy to play: There are flies coming from top of the screen and player tries to catch them before flies get in touch to muffins in the bottom of the screen. There are couple of special "weapons" available to boost killing the files: Fly poison and Frog. Please watch attached video clip from Youtube to get understanding of this game: Fly Assault! will be available at Google Play Store in July 2016. -Jussi

Here are some general guidelines that should help to get your first gamedev projects proceed, and even completed in a reasonable time. 0. Prepare to sacrifice your time and effort Ok, you have idea for a game. But are you ready to make the effort to implement it? If you want to get your ideas ready, most likely you got to do it yourself. No one else will do it for you. 1. Start with something small and simple.  If your first game project is large and complex, you probably won't finish it. 2. Select an engine that fits to your game.  There is no need to shoot birds with cannon. Try different engines and use the one that fits for your purposes. 3. Create lots of prototypes and small games.   Select the ones that work for further development. Gather experience on suspended and unfinished projects.  4. Test the mechanics in early phase.  Find out if game mechanics is working as soon as you have working prototype. Try to define game's "fun facto...

We have been working on two separate game projects in parallel. Now one of them is in quite mature condition and it is likely that it will be published in a couple of weeks. So it maybe is time to shortly introduce the game concept? Working title for the game is "Dualball". This is a platform game where player controls two balls at the same time with single click (or touch, depending on the device). The challenge comes from the parallel nature of this game: you must be able to do some multi-tasking and time your clicks correctly. Timely performance is rewarded with coins that are spread on the levels. Collecting all coins is not always straightforward, and you have to carefully think what kind of a sequence is required to clean up the level. We have been testing "Dualball" on flash and Android platforms, and it seems that the latter one is bit more convenient for this concept. However, game will be released in flash format first. Android version will follow ...

First part of my summer vacations is over, and tomorrow it is time go back to work. Luckily, I have still one week vacation left in the beginning of August. :) My game development activities have also been quite minimal for last couple of weeks. However, there is a small exception: I've been discussing with my brother how our gamedev activities should be continued for the rest of the year. And as a part of this process we have tried to sketch a roadmap for upcoming game releases. I work full-time in large telecommunications company and all my game development is done in leisure time, so there is a clear need for some kind of a rough plan to keep things progressing smoothly. First of all, we have a plan to release three html5 games in the next six months: Two smaller ones and one large one. Smaller games are planned to have relatively simple graphics and gameplay, so we are able to finish them ourselves quite smoothly. There are already technology demos up and running for both ...

How do you get ideas for games? How do you further develop and grow your ideas? Do you consider yourself as a creative person? Since I have long background on so-called non-creative sector, the concept of creativity is not too familiar for me. I have colleagues who consider themselves as hightly creative persons. But in practice most of them are rather systematic thinkers and great problem solvers, than truly creative persons. Of course there are individuals that differ from the mass, but there are not many of them.  In my daily work (as SoC specialist), most of my ideas are born because of practical need. There might be a task that no one has done before and there is no ready-made solution for that. Also because I am bit lazy by nature (typical engineer?), I will try to find  the easiest possible way to perform the task. Therefore, I write lots of custom scripts for a wide range of applications. This is commonly called as problem solving, and in many cases it has nothing to...

After releasing my latest game-like work at Mochimedia, I decided it is time to have a small break in game development and evaluate how things have been going in last couple of months. My goal for the overall quality of my first flash game was not pretty high, but yes: I still was able to fall below that: game idea was not earth-shaking, graphics sucked, there were performance problems, and to top of it all the game had some nasty bugs or unexpected features. But hey: I was able to get something ready and distributed! I think it was the most important thing at that point, and it encouraged me to take next steps forward. Following game projects were bit easier to implement, and I was able to add some complexity to the game mechanics and graphics. But more complexity means also more work and to a certain extent also higher probability to errors. Couple of my projects have ended up in deadlock situation where I was unable to figure out how to fix them. I would say fledgling game dev...

Background: I am creating couple of concepts, and then select at least one of them for further development.  To get things going, I drafted first concept document to briefly describe a simple maze game. The game idea for this concept should be familiar at least for Finnish people. Similar kind of a real-life "marble and maze" game is built by company called Brio. The concept document is copied below. I don't know if the initial version covers all required matters, but you are free to comment. Enjoy! -Jussi -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “ I've Lost My Marbles!” The ultimate game with marbles, holes, action and despair. Many of us have spent hours twisting noddles and trying to get marble to pass the labyrinth without dropping to one of the countless holes of board. “I've Lost My Marbles!” brings traditional board game to the digital world. ...