As a trained classical animator, it is natural for me to start a project with character and layout design. These two elements set the tone of the game, so it is critical not to rush through the design process. Once the master designs have been set, I can then move forward into animation tasks.
Here are some of the design pieces of the monkey:
This is the finial monkey design, but it took us about 25 days to come to this conclusion…
Other than marketing and having people actually want to buy and play Catch the Monkey, the single biggest remaining hurdle is getting the game to run on real hardware.
The game has been running excellently in the simulator: frame speed is good, controls function well, no errors or memory issues. But this week was the big test to see if I could get it off my development computer and onto an actual device. And the amazing thing is: it worked!
As of friday afternoon, i was able to test the game on the Android Asus Transformer (tablet), iPad 1 (tablet), and iPhone 4. Overall, a very exciting way to leave for a holiday weekend.
Now we have our work cut out for us to address the memory issues causing it to fail on the iPod Touch Gen 2.
Catch the monkey is an upcoming game for the iPhone/iPad (and android once we release the iOS versions). It is being made by two ridiculously talented people called MirthWerx.
(screenshots are from actual play of our work in progress, we’re still working on them)
The Gist of It
Curious little monkeys are getting into the farmer’s field and eating his potato crop. Unfortunately the farmer is an old grandpa and can’t quite catch the monkeys. It is your job, should you choose to accept it, to use tools to distract the monkeys so the farmer can safely remove them from the field.
As you progress the monkeys come faster and more types of monkeys come. To help you along the way, new tools become available and it is up to you to use the best tool for the job to protect the farm!
So today was another day of polishing and putting in final graphics.
I read an email from The Artist suggesting when the player buys the gum upgrade, which makes the monkey go slower for a longer period of time than the normal gum, that the monkey go green instead of pink. This created a ridiculous debate about which flavour of gum is “stronger” or “sticky-er” than the other. The kind of ludicrous discussion that is important, but the points from which people are arguing sound utterly ridiculous down the hall.
So what do you think?
[polldaddy poll=5440370]
This is the public announcement of our gaming division.
The Artist and I had a meeting in my dining room today. We determined it is time get the marketing going on our upcoming iPhone/iPad game Catch The Monkey. So this beautiful post is the result of that meeting.
As part of that meeting we concluded our working title for the game will now be the official release title. Why? It’s simple. We can’t come up with anything better. 🙂
[polldaddy poll=5440393]
