Jacob Habgood

Rogues’ Rendezvous: Vertically Sliced

We’re aiming to produce one complete level for Shadows on Deck, or what is often called a “vertical slice” of gameplay. In a professional game development studio, it is quite common to create a small section of a game like this in order to prove the concept’s worth to a publisher. Console games often cost many millions of dollars to develop, and these days it is usually only the big-name publishers who can afford to pick up this kind of bill. Nonetheless, they don’t just hand over that kind of money based on a design document, however good it may be. Publishers are always looking for AAA titles, but the truth is that it is actually impossible to design such a game on paper! The art of game design is an interactive, step-by-step process and quality games evolve into being; they are not simply implemented according to a meticulous plan.

Of Mice and Pen: Pirate Art

So, we have a game design, we have characters, and we have a story. Broadly speaking, these are the bare bones over which the body of the game is built. The design and story dictate to some extent the direction the programmers might take, and of course the same is true for the artistic style, which is where the job of a concept artist begins.

Greetings, Game Maker

So here we are, about to embark on another journey into the world of game development. You may have joined us last time in The Game Maker’s Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners (Apress, 2006), or perhaps you taught yourself the basics of Game Maker under your own steam. Either way, we invite you to dust off your trusty keyboard and loosen up your mouse-arm as you join us in The Game Maker’s Companion.

Storytelling in Theory

Since the first campfire was lit, humans have told each other stories. There is just something magical about them. They allow us a glimpse into other lives, other situations than our own, and provide us with a better understanding of everything around us. Just like playing is a form of practice in agility and in hunting and surviving, so stories offer mental play to allow us to prepare for situations that might possibly arise. Stories are just naturally fascinating for us and we are drawn to them.

The Story Begins

Shadows on Deck may belong to the platform game genre, but it is the story and puzzle elements of the game that are the driving force behind the concept. It already looks pretty cool, and has a pretty solid movement mechanic, but this kind of game needs the puzzles, traps, and character interactions set out in the game design to keep the player engaged along the way. These are the elements that will appeal to the game’s target audience, moving it away from a hard-core platform game like Zool and toward the platform-adventure genre.

Krool’s Forces: Sweetening the Challenge

One-hundred and fifty years before Gremlin came up with the idea for Zool, his home city of Sheffield (in the UK) witnessed the birth of a quite different sort of company. This was George Bassett and Co. Limited, the confectioner who would go on to produce Licorice Allsorts, Jelly Babies, and Wine Gums. So, although it may be somewhat surreal, it’s actually quite fitting that the first world in Zool was inspired by the colorful and tempting wares of a candy store.

Platform Beginnings: An Idea with Legs

Not everyone agrees which game holds the honor of being the world’s first platform game. Nonetheless, it was certainly the arrival of Donkey Kong back in 1981 that popularized this classic game genre and cemented many of its core mechanics. Mario (as he would later become known) ran, jumped, and climbed ladders between platforms in order to avoid a whole range of hazards and enemies. This seems to include all the key aspects we would expect to find in a platform game today, so it could well have been the first platform game—or at least the first digital platform game.

Game Design: “Shadows on Deck”

Lots of people think they have a great idea for a game, a film, or a novel. What they actually have is the first spark of an idea that sets the imagination going, but a lot more is needed before you can say you have a complete game concept. Take for instance our Fishpod game in the earlier section. The first catch was—what if you played a fish that had to move to land and learn to live there? Our game description was as follows:

Zool: Taking It to the Nth Dimension

Gremlin Graphics was responsible for bringing a menagerie of video-game franchises to the gaming world, including the likes of Monty Mole and Jack the Nipper in the 1980s, Premier Manager and Zool in the early 90s, and Actua Soccer and Loaded before the turn of the millennium. If you’re young enough not to have heard of Zool, then you may be surprised to know that he was once seen as the gaming mascot for Amiga computers in the same way that Sonic was for SEGA and Mario is for Nintendo. Zool was a best-selling title that was bundled with every new Amiga 1200, as well as being ported to all the major game consoles of the day. There was even a sequel that featured Zooz (Zool’s girlfriend) and Zoon (Zool’s alien dog).

Empowerment: Sliding Ninjas

Games like Zool and Sonic are at their most enjoyable when they empower the player with a feeling of control over a fluid gameplay experience. In other words, the player is able to execute very cool moves without too much effort. The player feels in control, but somehow their normal abilities seem to be enhanced beyond what they should realistically be able to achieve. Sonic routinely flies about the landscape at incredible speeds, grabbing rings mid-flight and narrowly avoiding perilous-looking hazards—and that makes the player feel powerful. Naturally, some of this is just good level design, but the levels wouldn’t work if Sonic didn’t have a beautifully fluid movement mechanic in the first place.