So, as you’ve probably noticed, we reorganized the site. By “we”, of course I mean “Duncan”, since he does all the technical rubbish and I’m just the fifth wheel. Point is, now you don’t have to deal with that old, god awful, completely counter-intuitive setup, and instead can treat your eyes to a good ol’ fashioned blog.
We’re satisfied with Starlight’s reception so far, we didn’t expect it to become the next Braid or Limbo, but we’ve had some purchases and people have been enjoying it, and that’s all you can ask for really.
A lot of people’s comments concern the game’s art style, which have been VERY polarizing. Some have found it to be unique looking and interesting, while others haven’t found it so appealing. If you fall into the latter category, you may be pleased to know that an artist has approached Duncan, and they’re talking about collaborating for his next game, so we possibly have that to look forward to.
Both Duncan and I have been trying to think of what to do for our next, or in my case first, projects. I figured some people might be interested in hearing a little bit about the process.
My main problems are that I have little programming experience and I’m not talented at art. The first problem can be rectified with practice, the second… not so much. So I’ve been trying to think of ideas that would be interesting, but not necessarily difficult to do in terms of programming or art. Originally my thought process was “Let’s take this story and tie it to a generic platformer”, which really wasn’t getting me anywhere.
There’s a fundamental difference in the way Duncan and I think when it comes to getting ideas. Let’s say you gave both of us a picture of a robot and then told us to make a game based solely on that drawing. Duncan would start thinking about what kinds of things the robot could do to make for interesting gameplay situations. My first thought would be “Who is this robot, and what is he trying to accomplish?”
So I tend to look at things in a way that very much focuses on narrative, is what I’m saying. In my first round of brainstorming I tried to fight my inner writer, but that wasn’t working well at all. Later, I realized I should be playing to my strengths instead of fighting them. If I thought more about how to use the strengths of the medium to tell a story instead of “making another platformer with a gimmick”, I could probably get better, more inspired results.
With that in mind, I thought a lot about a game taking place in a courtroom, because 12 Angry Men has been on my mind lately. The original idea was to make a game where you took the rule of a lone juror trying to convince the other jurors to agree with your view. The idea was that the game would mostly be based around dialogue and your choices. Some jurors would be harder to break than others, if you’re not careful previous dialogue choices could back you into a corner, etc.
The good thing about a game like that is that it would be comparatively simple to program and I could use 8-bit pixel art to hide my non-existent artistic ability. Unfortunately, the bad outweighed the good. The main problem would be handling the actual trial itself. You couldn’t just be given a cheat sheet of the main points of the case, because then you wouldn’t be able to use the smaller, more subtle things to help you out in your stance, like in 12 Angry Men, when Juror #8 noticed that the woman who saw the killing wore glasses. But forcing the player to sit through the trial at the very beginning would be long and tedious, and the player would probably forget half the important information anyways, so that wouldn’t work either. My next idea was instead of placing the player on a jury was to place him or her in the role of a defense attorney who… oh, wait a minute.
So I’m not exactly anywhere, but I think I’m getting on the right track with the whole “focus on the story” angle. I guess I could kidnap Duncan and make him my personal code monkey, but then I’d have to feed him.
