Half-Genie, All Heart
Happy Genie-tines Day!
Here's a
Valentine's Day wish from
WayForward to all of our
Shantaerians and
Tinkerbackers! o^_^o
Building a Hero
Lets talk about
game development at
WayForward, shall we? Before we get to production artwork (the highly polished stuff you see in the final game), we take our ideas through a lot of phases. Our goal is to make every single element in Half-Genie Hero the best it can be, and to provide adequate time to polish, iterate, tear down, try again and so on.
We begin by
scoping out the game, something that all of you had a hand in. We're designing 2 intro segments (one for
Shantae and one for
Risky Boots),
5 main Chapters or "Worlds", and an epic conclusion. Some of these Worlds will be themed to the stretch goals you all made happen --
racing on magic carpets in one case, tracking down the secret origins of
Shantae's new Guardian Genie Rival in the other. Each chapter will have its own enemies, music, effects, environments, and bosses which all get broken down into tasks, with time and money accounted for.
Then comes the fun stuff... concept artwork, scenario design, engine development, character design, rough story outlines, animation tests, and our gameplay "collision gym", which we use to establish game rules (gravity, camera, enemy behavior, and Shantae's moves).
Here's a
sketchbook page breaking the game down into Worlds (we call them Chapters when referring to story, but Worlds might be a better term. You know, standard game jargon). Players will be unlocking these Worlds in order, following a mostly linear storyline - and then revisiting them to fulfill NPC quests. You can see which characters might be involved with the storyline too.
Next are some thumbnails - loose paintings that explore color and tone for each area. This makes it easy to see the game at a glance and say, "Hey, there's no Lava area in this game, but we've got 2 kinds of swamp...is that ok?"
And finally some
character designs for one of our large scale bosses, the
Giga Mermaid. In our
Waterfall Chapter, Shantae is investigating some mermaid-related crime and this
50 foot tall Mermaid Princess marks the end of the level. While she rages out and deals epic damage to Shantae you've got to wonder why she's in chains. Is this a frame job? Maybe and maybe not! Anything can (and will) change in the early phases of development. That's why we call it
Game Development!
Mightiest of the Year!
In other news,
Mighty Switch Force! 2 has been nominated for
Game of the Year by
Pocket Gamer and we need your help to win! Please click the image below and vote to make your voice heard!
Blackmore
Our good friend
Jeremy Blaustein and the team at
iQiOi Co., Ltd. have an exciting
Steampunk Adventure game on Kickstarter right now:
Blackmore. Jeremy has localized some of our previous titles and we hope you'll take a look at his campaign :)
Thanks for reading and remember, to stay in touch with us between updates you can follow us on Twitter
@WayForward or
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