This weekend (after collectively enjoying Iron Man 2 – it’s research somehow, I promise), we sat down and forbade ourselves from playing Street Fighter IV until we’d spent some time thinking about the nitty gritty of the game’s combat systems – the moment to moment gameplay and feel.

It’s difficult to get on the right track, particularly when trying to brainstorm a particular element of the game – we had a few false starts as we went off on random tangents, having ideas about what to do in different parts. But fortunately we kept refocusing, and kept attempting to approach the task in a different way.

We finally scored a hit on the “First Five Minutes” approach, which I have to credit to Dan (my boss at my day job). It’s a great approach where you simply say: “Okay, we begin where the player starts in the game. Lets write out, moment by moment, everything we want that player to experience in the first five minutes of play.” It ends up feeling a bit like playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, where you’re making up the rules as you go.

Once we made it on track we were blazing ahead, and we came up with some great stuff – I’ve scanned a couple of the less spoilery pages of my (terribly scrawled) notes below to give you guys a sneak peek at what we’re looking to implement. After a mere hour or so, we had set up concrete ideas for each of the workmen’s strengths and weaknesses, and had created a clear mental picture of how we want it to play out – a picture I’m now in the process of breaking down to figuring out how to get there code-wise, system by system.

No, that isn't ancient Vedic Sanscrit, it's just my handwriting. Man. I wish I could write Vedic Sanscrit.

This week will be focused on getting as much of that moment-to-moment gameplay in as possible, with the eventual goal of being able to play, dynamically and in real time, the scene that we’ve constructed. I’ll let you know how it goes!

- Jason

Hello everybody!

The titles of the most recent protected posts may have hinted at the process that we’re going through at the moment – which is in a nutshell changing the genre of the game. It’s been a while coming – the thoughts and ideas that led us down this road kind of began a few months ago, when we brainstormed some actions the characters could do on top of their tower-building duties.

Last weekend, during a talk to expand these actions, we all ended up realising/admitting to ourselves that we weren’t really making the game that we wanted to make. Our initial idea for a 360° tower defense game was cool, and it probably would have made a pretty good game eventually. But it doesn’t have the gameplay spark that we were banking on, and a lot of our core goals for what we want the game to do, such as bringing life to the characters and making them feel like the core of the experience, are subverted and muffled by the tower defense gameplay.

There are a few other reasons for the switch, but I won’t go on too long – suffice it to say, we’re pretty excited about the ideas we’re having at the moment for the game, it has a lot of potential, and it’s a lot more focused toward what we’re directly interested in, which will inherently help us make a better game overall.

All said, it does mean a delay for the game’s eventual release. But the advantage that we have is that a lot of the existing systems that we created for the TD gameplay can be reused for the new game… it shouldn’t take us all that much time to get as far along in the new genre as we previously were. Not only that, but the existing story, dialog, art and etc. will not need to be modified greatly. The plot is still the same – it’s the way the characters interact with the world that has changed.

As for what the new gameplay is, we haven’t nailed it down enough to reveal too much yet, but you’ll be controlling the characters more directly in combat, and it’s going to be more action- and exploration-oriented. The new orientation mentioned is landscape (as opposed to portrait, which we were), and (I think) I’ve mostly finished the code for it! Once I’ve got the bones of the new gameplay started, we’ll post a video that will hopefully clarify the direction we’re going in. Until then, thanks for your patience, and sit tight!

- Jason

Current build of Shadow Field

Thanks to some gentle prodding by an eager fan (you know who you are ), here’s some new Shadow Field content! It’s been a while since we made our last video – the game’s progressing along quite well, although a major content pass is still forthcoming before we’re ready to move into alpha.

Shadow Field – Indie iPhone Game – Pre-Alpha Build!

As you can see, we’ve done away with the extending/retracting menus for a sidebar with drag and drop functionality – a great and much needed simplification for the interface. I’ve also recently put in the base  entrance closing/opening functionality. The player can open the “hatches” of the base to attract more enemies, which dynamically increases the difficulty (and, of course, the score multiplier).

It’s an idea that I’ve had for a while, and so far it seems to work pretty well. The game gets crazy difficult when all four hatches are open due to the fact that I both increase the difficulty of each wave and divide the wave timer by the amount of open hatches… Fun!

If you enjoy the music in the video, you can grab an mp3 of it here. Bonus screenshot (with never-before-seen enemy type!) after the jump:

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