DevTrek Week 4 - Story Development

At the end of week 4 I've got a basic matching game developed, that was a good exercise to get a better understanding of Unity, ready to start making the game work the way I've designed. In the video below you can see Goobert stretching over 2 tiles.



To develop the stories for each character I started looking at the drawings and a few things sprung to mind. Googar only has one tooth for example because he is about six years old and that's why he's always up to mischief. Goobriella rarely gets stuck, except when Googar is up to his antics. Gooby is only small so he builds up to his first big stretch, a bit like his first day at school, and he learns not to splat without his dummy.

One story for Goobert I came up with for children is "I have a plan to get out of this jam!" Where he gets stuck to things, in between trees, under a hedge, in a muddy puddle, and he has to work out how to get unstuck. Does he back out, go under or stretch over? Goobert repeats the same line "I have a plan to get out of this jam!" before he escapes his predicament. And at the end of the story he gets stuck in a pot of jam! Might be a fun one to read with a kid. So Goorillas are small, about the size of a jam pot.

Googar is part of the Goorilla family because they are nice creatures. They are small and a bit timid and when they get scared, they splat. If they splat then given a bit of time, they pull themselves back together.

Thinking about these creatures now and their short journey through the strange land, reminded me a bit of little blue penguins that dash across a beach. They almost make it to the other side, then one gets scared and they all run back. It is quite a funny thing to see them running backwards and forwards before they finally make it. So I'm going to try that idea in this game, instead of focusing on score and levels, it will be about getting the Goorillas to the next step of their journey.

I've tuned my initial design and taken out the concentration element, because it doesn't suit the characters or this game-play, it also reflects earlier feedback. Maybe I'll come back to that idea in a future game.

I can answer my questions from last week about what should fall down for sure now. I hope this game will be different, maybe even zany!

Meet the Goorillas

Meet the Goorillas - Goobert, Goobriella, Googar & Gooby!

Goorillas are made out of goo. They can stretch and squeeze and sometimes they get stuck to things. Occasionally they splat! Goorillas come from the planet Goo where the laws of physics are sometimes different to our own, and there is just a little hint of magic about them.

Goobert is the dad, the oldest and largest of the Goorillas. He can stretch the furthest but sometimes he gets stuck to things when he tries to squeeze his way through.

Goobriella is the mom, she rarely splats as she likes to keep her cool.

Googar is a cougar made from goo. He follows the Goorillas around and is always up to mischief.

Gooby can't stretch as far as his dad yet as he is only little and he often splats.

Join the Goorillas on their journey to their new home in ShanGoori-La.

Unity 2D Testing continues

I'm taking my time a little bit getting to know Unity before I dive in to developing the game, only a few more areas to cover before the prototype development can begin.

Here is one of the tests of the particle system, I've animated an explosion of Googars which looked fun.

Goorillas 2D Second Draft

I've spent the last few weeks exploring Unity, focusing on the new 2D tools and I'm pretty impressed with them.

Learning the basics of 3D really came in handy as Unity is a 3D environment and you can flip between a 2D and 3D view, which I found very useful for getting layers right for 2D animation.

As a test I've created a second draft of a Goorilla (a monkey made of goo) and Googar (a Cougar made of goo) in Inkscape and Unity.

Goorillas 3D Characters First Draft

I've been getting familiar with 3D over the last couple of weeks in my spare time, mainly working with Blender. It's a great piece of kit. I'm hoping to collaborate with 3D Designers one day so now seems like a good idea to get a better understanding of the principles of 3D, before I move into programming a game.

Today I can create my own simple 3D assets and I know more about modelling, meshes, curves, armatures etc and have experienced the process of creating a character.

I had a go at creating a Goorilla character in 3D.

I popped him in to a test game based on the Unity roll a ball tutorial which I adapted to work on mobile devices:

I will hopefully come back to exploring Blender in more depth at a later date. As for this game, and my skill set, It's going to be 2D.

For now I am ready to move on to programming in Unity to get ready to create the game prototype.

Game Concept Feedback From Draft Ideas

The aim of this blog is to get feedback as I go along developing the game, so I can make it better.

Since starting with a few ideas and a blank piece of paper at the beginning of the month I've already gotten some useful feedback which I thought I'd post before development begins tomorrow.

Gameplay feedback:

1 - The concentration element of the game, combined with the matching element may be tough for younger players.

Perhaps I'll have a 'kid' mode for the game or I'll leave the concentration gameplay element for later levels. I'll find out if players like it during play testing for sure. For now I have shifted this feature down in priority.

2 - Collecting items by matching them could mean you collect them to help the Goorillas on their journey, food items like bananas for example.

Nice idea! I'll pop that feature into the design straight away.

Aesthetics feedback:

For the last few weeks in my spare time I've been testing out a few different game technologies. Along the way I created a few mock-ups to try things out. This also helped to visualise the Goorilla characters and a few obvious tweaks are:

1 - Goorilla's face needs to be bigger, and his tooth needs to lose the sharp edge to make him look friendlier.

2 - Googar's eyes need to be bigger. (Googar is a cougar made out of goo.)

Technology & next steps:

It will essentially be a 2D game, with the occasional nice special effect as that is what players have come to expect from the genre.

I'm going to build the game in Unity3D and initially target Android. My experiments with the technology so far have been interesting, but there is nothing like building something to understand the technology and the process better.

If anybody in the blogosphere has any comments on the game concept before I begin then please add a comment or message me via Facebook @Goorillas thanks.

Goorillas - Aesthetics First Draft

I think a cartoon style will suit the Goorillas so I've sketched a few ideas.

I started looking at real gorilla and chimp faces and then tried to make them a bit cartoony.

As Goorillas are monkeys made out of goo then their bodies should be like balls of goo.

Making the Goorilla's head a bit more elongated and his arms longer makes him more gorilla like and he still looks gooey so I inked him up.

I'm not sure what colours these little characters should be yet, so I'll try a few and see what works and what people like, maybe green or blue?

Goorillas Story - The Journey to ShanGoori-La

It has become obvious from making observations during a game genre analysis that these Goorilla characters should have a story, and the game should feature their journey. This should increase the immersive qualities of the game and aid in gamifying level progression.

So I've adapted the Goorillas journey from one I've witnessed during my time in Kuala Lumpur.

I used to see monkeys down the hill from the condo, which was an interesting experience for me as I'm from England.

Occasionally I would see the monkeys scampering through the condo and climb the fence at the back to get to an area of protected forest.

As building in the area increased I would see fewer monkeys down the hill as they migrated to the protected forest to escape from the construction noise and loss of their habitat.

Once I saw a group of young monkeys stop by some shrubs during their journey through the condo and it looked like they were smelling the flowers, but they were probably forriging for food.

They were soon off again over the fence and making happy sounding monkey noises grouped together in the interesting looking trees, as if they had made it through the strange land to Shangri-la.

So that's the Goorillas story, their journey up the hill to escape the destruction of their habitat, through the strange man made jungle which eventually leads to ShanGoori-La, the protected forest with cool looking trees and great big sky views.

This journey will hopefully give the game a feeling of achievement and adds to the immersive role-play and discovery elements that modern players have come to expect from games today.

Goorillas - Gameplay Ideas

So I made good use of the time stuck waiting for a plane and sketched out a few ideas for the first Goorillas game.

What could make the game unique are the Goorilla characters which stretch, get stuck to things and occasionally go splat!

The game I'm going to create draws together elements from tile matching video games, the card game concentration and a little bit from whack games, all of which are games I have experimented with before. Play testing and finding out what players like from previous projects is certainly being considered at this early drawing board phase.

Being able to visualise the Goorillas moves makes it comparable to the competition, and it looks like the game should stand out as a bit zany :)

Times when I'm travelling and don't have WiFi are always good for letting my mind wander and ideas form.

I've drawn it very simply, much like a storyboard for a video, or a wireframe for a website, so it is easy for people to give me feedback straight away.  (Please leave me a comment if you have any thoughts.)

So far the feedback has been positive and constructive which is great. My other ideas for games with these characters were either too ambitious for the time frame or were not as well received. So it is easy to throw away things that don't work early on and focus on something that is achievable, something that might work.

The proposed gameplay has developed from the characters unique qualities, from experimentation and consideration of past game projects and from observing what players like when they play games. I know there is no formula for success but hopefully this three pronged approach will yield a fun game.

Goorillas - Characters for video games

Goorillas is an idea for characters for video games that came to mind during an excursion to see monkeys in Borneo. There was a kid on my boat that called them goorillas. It was jokingly pointed out they were actually monkeys, and not made from goo, but the idea stuck with me.

So goorillas are made out of goo, they can stretch and squeeze and sometimes get stuck to things and, as they are made of goo, occasionally they splat!