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[williemammoth]

Hi there,

So, quick intro, I'm part of a team of three guys who left university and started a game dev company. We've been making little games for companies for the last couple of years but we've decided that its time to start making our own games again.


We thought that we would spend each week for a month making prototypes, one prototype every week, and if we have made something we think has legs at the end of the month, we go with it . The only rules were that the games had to be (loosely) based around a random theme, and that we needed to stick to the one week deadline, oh and we have to keep doing client work so we can eat and keep the lights on. Easy, right?

Apologies in advance for any bad formatting, I haven't posted here much yet.

Week 1: Platfall - 2 player local PvP





So this was our first prototype, and we were really happy with it! The gameplay was simple enough that we could put a bit more time into polish and juice and it was genuinely fun. The theme was 'recharging', which shows you that we weren't very strict with the theme at all. You could argue that the floor kind of recharges... but the themes were always meant to be a starting point for the concept phase more than anything.

Web version [Unity web Player]: http://fieronz.itch.io/platfall

Week 2: Pillar Peril - (another) 2 player local PvP





Week 2 was another success in our book, this game was definitely less polished, but we were really happy with the gameplay. The concept was arguably quite similar to our first game, but different enough that we didn't have a problem with exploring it (we also LOVE local pvps). The theme for this one was infecting, which isn't very related to the game at all, one of the guys said that we could say that we are 'infecting the floor with down-ness...'

Web version [Unity Web Player]: http://fieronz.itch.io/pillar-peril-prototype

Week 3: Odd Juan Out - Puzzle game(?)





So this one was a big step in the other direction from our previous games, we had had a bit of criticism that our previous games were too alike, and that we didn't stick with the theme. So we took this weeks theme of 'Odd one out' a little to literally. The goal of the game is to find a guy(Juan) in a crowd of identical people, if you click a person they will tell you if they can see Juan, you can right click the people you know aren't Juan by right-clicking them (like minesweeper). You win when you find Juan, the less clicks the better.

This game was not as fun as we anticipated, you can potentially find Juan in one turn, or there could be a situation where nobody is even looking at Juan. We were admittedly quite busy with client work this week so we couldn't spend as much time as we wanted to, the game could benefit a lot from polish and fixing some bugs, but we will probably never come back to this one.

Week 4: Blindspot : 2-4 Player Local PvP Racing





This game is basically slot cars, but when you accelerate, you vanish. The theme was 'blindness'.

This was a game that left feeling confused. We didn't like it at all, to us it just didn't feel that satisfying to play because when you are actually interacting with the game you don't even see anything, also the polish was at an all time low. So I was pretty confused when I googled it the week after release and it had been picked up by another online game website based out of the Philippines and had about 140,000 plays, which made it our most played prototype by far.

That version: http://www.y8.com/games/blindspot_fiero_interactive

We probably still wont come back to that one, if anyone thinks they know how this would have got such a disproportionate amount of playtime please let me know.

End of Month 1 - Review/postmortem

So after 4 weeks we had 4 prototypes, we were definitely happy with the first two, but we felt that we should do this for one more month before we make a final decision. Partly because it would take a long time to fully develop Platfall or Pillar Peril and partly because it is just really fun working on a fresh project each week .

Week 5: Space Fight - 2 Player PvP Ragdolls in space

This gif is too damn big: (http://i.imgur.com/EMEFQYi.gifv)

The second month began by underestimating the shit out of this project! The theme was 'space battle' which gave us plenty of options, we chose to go with 'Ragdolls fighting for survival in a faulty spacestation". In the end product, the 'fighting' part is a bit of a loose term, while you can grab/throw each other, the main objective is to not let the space station kill you first.

A week wasn't enough time for this prototype, there is a lot that needs to be done before we can really evaluate whether this could be a good game or not. A good place to start would be better feedback for grabbing, some sort of tutorial, changes to the level design etc.

Web version: http://fieronz.itch.io/spacefight

Week 6: Table Toss - 2 Player local PvP




This game is in the same vein as Rock Paper Scissors, in that you need to anticipate your opponents moves while planning your own. It's pretty silly but we've had a lot of fun playing this, and we've had some great feedback on the art which is always nice.

Web version: http://fieronz.itch.io/table-toss

Week 7: Robo Bros - 1-2 player co-op [The Chosen One]



Link: http://fieronz.itch.io/robo-bros

This is it! This is what we are going to be doing for the next few months

It ticks all the boxes for us, we love to play it, we've had good feedback, it's got obvious monetization options (mobile), it's challenging, we know how we can make it better, and it won't take us years to make!

So, that's what I'll be posting about on TIG from now on, we've already started elaborating on the concept, we've tried implementing 4 player, increased new/different obstacles, and got a mobile version working on android and iOS. Thanks for reading about our story and hopefully you would like see how things turn out for Fiero and Robo Bros, I'll be posting new builds soon

If you have any questions about any of prototypes we've made please ask them, I love to talk about this stuff

p.s. there's one more prototype that we never got round to finishing that is still in the works, will provide details soon