{"id":87,"date":"2015-08-08T09:41:43","date_gmt":"2015-08-08T09:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/?p=87"},"modified":"2015-08-09T08:14:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-09T08:14:10","slug":"new-game-my-indie-game-maker-submission-mamore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/general\/new-game-my-indie-game-maker-submission-mamore\/","title":{"rendered":"New Game: My Indie Game Maker Submission – Mamore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MamoreScreen1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A few weeks back, around the time I was finishing off Balloon pop, I was visiting HumbleBundle, if you haven\u2019t heard of this site you should seriously check it out, games + charity = Awesome, \u00a0to check out their new main bundle, what I found was a bundle dedicated to making games, specifically, a bundle supporting the Indie Games Maker Contest 2015 (IGMC2015).<\/p>\n

I wanted to find out more about this contest, and as I didn\u2019t know much about IGMC I decided to investigate further. I headed over to the site and had a quick look through the rules and guidelines. At the time I thought it would be interesting to enter, but felt that I wanted to concentrate on finishing my then current project.<\/p>\n

After I finally wrapped up balloon Pop, \u00a0I started thinking about my next project and what I wanted to do both in scale and type. I wanted my next project to be another simple-ish project but to be slightly larger in scale, a tad more ambitious.<\/p>\n

It was then that I remembered the competition and thought it might be an idea to make a game that follows the rules and guidelines, that way if I finish it before the cutoff date, and I think it is good enough, I could enter it into the competition. And so I decided to investigate the competition a bit more. I headed back over to the site and reread the rules and guidelines, making note of the twist growth. At this point the competition had already been running for almost a week, leaving me about three weeks to make a game, which aligned nicely with the amount of time I wanted to dedicate to my next project.<\/p>\n

Idea:<\/b><\/p>\n

After rereading the rules and guidelines, I started brainstorming ideas for projects that were somewhat simple and incorporated growth. I played around with a couple ideas, including a platformer where you must grow a central beanstalk to reach higher levels, but I felt this would take longer than 3 weeks to make. I wanted something simple both graphically and mechanically but still had some depth, whilst also adhering to the theme of growth. Eventually \u00a0I settled on an idea where the aim of the game was to protect a central block from a growing number of incoming blocks, and where these incoming blocks could also grow in size. I created a few concepts, settling on a style I liked before starting work on the prototype.<\/p>\n

\"MamoreConcept\"<\/a>
Early Concept<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Development:<\/b><\/p>\n

For most of the development from prototype to finished game not much really changed in terms of core gameplay and graphical style. Not to say things didn\u2019t change, in fact as a game starts to flesh out you find somethings just don\u2019t work or could be done differently. For example, initially there was going to be a health bar at the top of the screen to represent the health of the block the player must defend. But early in development I decided I didn\u2019t want the top of the screen obscured, so I came up with the idea to use the block itself to take on the role of the health bar, changing colour as it loses, or gains, energy; along with the introduction of a two stage size increase as the energy drops\/rises; I also felt this was a nice nod to growth. But for the most part the core remained the same.<\/p>\n

\"BlockItScreen2\"<\/a>
Centre block changed from single size and colour to increasing in size and changing colour.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The majority of development time was probably spent on the enemy blocks, as not only do they add variety to the game, but also because I wanted each block to be slightly different. With different characteristics such as speed or its behavior once it got close to the target.<\/p>\n

The last thing to really get added, other than last minute particle effects, was the inclusion of turrets and block traps. These were in fact in the initial design outline, but I felt I should leave them until last in case I didn\u2019t have enough time to implement them properly, as the game was still fully playable without them. Thankfully this wasn\u2019t the case however, and I feel they add a nice element of strategy and resource management to the overall feel of the game.<\/p>\n

\"MamoreScreen6\"<\/a>
Final game, Particle effects were added to the lifeblock(centre block) and when the player destroys an enemy. Turrets and block traps were also added.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Final Thoughts<\/b><\/p>\n

I realise the game is far from perfect, with plenty of areas for improvements, such as difficulty balance and different game types etc, but I feel that it\u2019s a good improvement, even an increment on my last project, and was completed in roughly the same amount of time.
\nOverall I\u2019m pleased with how the game turned out and glad that I stuck to the time window so that I could enter the competition, and most of all I had a lot of fun making it.<\/p>\n

You can check out my IGMC2015 submission over at http:\/\/contest.gamedevfort.com\/submission\/433<\/a><\/p>\n

Wish me luck<\/p>\n

Joe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks back, around the time I was finishing off Balloon pop, I was visiting HumbleBundle, if you haven\u2019t heard of this site you should seriously check it out, games + charity = Awesome, \u00a0to check out their new main bundle, what I found was a bundle dedicated to making games, specifically, a bundle … Continue reading “New Game: My Indie Game Maker Submission – Mamore”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6],"tags":[38,41,42,35,34,23,36,37,33,40,39,8],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game","category-general","tag-action","tag-blocks","tag-colour","tag-competition","tag-contest","tag-game","tag-igmc2015","tag-indie-game-maker","tag-mamore","tag-simple","tag-stratergy","tag-unity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4XSDf-1p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.noddingtortoise.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}