When rules try to kill game design

Okay, I haven’t been posting as much as I wanted. But it has been very VERY busy. Basically I worked on the USA and EU version of Flipper. And hopefully (if everything goes right with the lotcheck) the USA version is available around xmas (but probably January).

As you may know there are a lot of technical rules for developing a console game, but there are also gameplay rules. I’m sure that when they created them it seems like a good thing, in fact if you read the rules they seem good. The problem is, they don’t always work for every game.

Flipper happens to be one of those games. It’s a puzzle game. It’s normal for the player to get trapped. However the rules say a player should never be trapped. And this is where my nightmare game design begins.

In flipper, there’s a powerup which lets you build blocks. You can build staircases and bridges with it. However, if you build it on top of the player. The player gets trapped. This is against the rules.

There are few options that one can take to solve this problem :

a.) When the player is inside a block, just push him up (to the top of the block). But this sucked because it ruins most of the puzzles. For example, in most of those puzzles, flipper is on top of a hill. You build a block against it (while the player stands against it aswell) and the player gets pushed to the top. Now the player can get Flipper without solving any of the puzzles.

b.) Not being able to build blocks around the player. Which also suckes a lot because now there’s a invinsible boundary where you can’t build. And you need to move the player before you can. This is irritating. Besides that, it was cool to be able to lift the player up by building a block under him (this is different than building a block ON him).

c.) Let the player die instantly (well, after the dying animation). Which is still against the rules, but a little better then letting the player decide it’s over (and manually have to restart the level). However, it also doesn’t give you the change to free yourself (in case you have a destroy-powerup).

In the end I decided to go for C. I don’t wan’t to just pick a fight, but I feel this is too important for the fun of the game. I don’t want to kill the puzzles for something as stupid as this.



Just to get something visual in this post: here’s a look at the result screen. You get points for unused powerups (solving the puzzle with the least amount of powerups), you get points for trapping the enemies (letting them fall of the world), and you get 250 points for reaching Flipper and another 500 points for finding the golden star!

new trailer, out now!

Last night was a freaky moment. For the first time in over a year, I had nothing to do on the Flipper project. I filled out some documents for Nintendo, but after that it was done. For the first time In ages I had nothing to do for the night, I had to go to bed.. like all normal people do at night. It was a shocking moment.
I’m sure there will be some minor adjustments to Flipper, but no real work. All my focus goes to promoting the game now. So if you have a game-website and you would like to know more about Flipper, don’t hesitate to mail me!

Promotion

First off, I did a podcast with the wiiDS podcast guys. You can check the interview out here; http://thewiids.co.uk/blog/?p=1247. In the interview I discuss all kinds of things about Flipper and it’s development process. I had a great time, thanks guys!

And now for the really big news; THE NEW TRAILER IS OUT NOW! Yes, finally! The publisher made it, and they gave me permission to start spreading it today. I think the trailer is absolutely awesome!
Go ahead and check it out :



You can find this trailer and the other trailers at the official Goodbye Galaxy Games youtube channel : http://www.youtube.com/goodbyegalaxygames

new things for the eyes!

I’m releasing some brand new screenshots,artwork and other stuff today! First off; I would like to present the logo and artwork! It’s done by Paul and it looks amazing!



The reason the logo isn’t on the box-art is because we (me and the publisher) felt that it wouldn’t be as readable when resized (what happens a lot on internet sites). I really feel like the box-art captured the mindless fun that you will experience while playing Flipper.



Okay now onto the screenshots! The ingame screenshots aren’t too revealing (the same world I have shown before) with maybe the exception for the pirate world (I didn’t really promote the pirate screenshots from my last blogpost).





What I find more interesting is the menu screenshots. Which hasn’t been shown before! The world-select screenshot shows all the worlds and reveals a little hint about the last world (robots!). The level-select screen shows the basic flow of the game (level 5 is the star level and level 6 is the bonus game). As well as how highscores are visible (at the bottom, it changes when you select a level). Also note the little golden stars appearing behind a level (if you collected a star there). Collect a star in the first 4 levels and the star-level opens! Also note how the menu-theme changes when you select a different world!

new new new

Finally new blog update! It took some time, because work right now is pretty frantic. Same excuse as last time :) right now, I’m trying to make a perfect build for Nintendo. Which is very hard. So many little rules. As you might have read, I wanted to get a build on its way last Friday. But I really misjudged the work that comes with making such builds. It’s looking good now, I’m positive that I will meet the deadline of this Friday!

I’ve been looking in to some other things as well regarding the Flipper projects. One of them is the price point. I wanted it be 200 points, badly. Even though the game is much bigger than all other 200 point games. I felt that everyone should try it, and that nobody would skip the game at 200 points.

It turns out that the price point isn’t just a matter of the developer wanting it. There are other parameters involved such as the download size. The Flipper game is fairly large, and because of that there might be a change I have to choose to sell it for 500 points.

I’m wondering right now what to do. If I really want the 200 point, I might be able to scale the game down (i.e. lose a lot of sound quality). But I don’t know if I want to make the game WORSE for 200 points or that I rather make it BETTER for 500 points (i.e. improve the sound quality that’s in the game right now).

PLEASE NOTE; that it’s not certain the game will be 500 points (or 200 points). I didn’t discuss this with Nintendo or the publisher, so I don’t know if they will make a fuss about it or not. Maybe if I ask really nice, they let me get away with 200 points even though the game is rather big :)

It’s just something floating in my mind right now.

Some time ago there was a preview of Flipper on Edge Online (http://www.edge-online.com/features/preview-flipper). Because I love the magazine, I decided to give them some exclusive screenshots of the pirate world.

Because it’s more than a month ago, and because I know some of you are itching for news, I decided to release them in their full glory right here :

the content is DONE!!

Okay, it took me some time to write a new blog post. But I had a good reason; Flipper development is going hard and fast! As of today basically all the content is done (I get 2 more songs on Monday, and I need to put in some translations) but all the graphics and levels are DONE.

I’m really happy and relieved right now. As some of you know I started school at the beginning of September, and I’m developing Flipper! at night. For the last few weeks I didn’t sleep more than 3 hours a night.

And now it’s basically done. And I’m so happy with the levels and how the game turned out. For the first time in my life I actually like to play my own game! Normally I don’t play my own games because I know all the levels and AI code by hearth. So it isn’t fun.

But in Flipper! there are just so many ways to complete a level or get a higher score. A wasted so many testing time on breaking my own high scores.

The high score is defined through the following parameters : how many items are left over in the level, how many enemies you killed and if you collected a star.

Combine this with the big freedom the powerups give you (you really can use the powerups everywhere). And the fact that you can improve your platform skills (i.e. get the timing just right so you can pass between two enemies). The platform skills aren’t necessary to complete a level but they do help if you want to get a really good score.

Also the guys from sonic picnic (http://www.sonicpicnic.nl/) have provided the audio for Flipper! and I must say, it’s awesome. Especially the different songs for each theme. It really captures the atmospheres of the worlds. And they sound darn catchy as well!

Next week consists of cleaning up the code and making sure the game follows all the rules of Nintendo. Then the game can be send to Nintendo for testing where it hopefully passes and gets added to the store/channel.

Also next week, I will make an official statements regarding the game and publisher (and hopefully release info). I will probably add some new visuals (the new logo is AWESOME!) and screenshots.