Next game!

We began work on our next game some time ago, but it was shelved so that we could focus on getting the massive amount of work for the Skill City Navigator finished.

Now that the Navigator is done, we are working all the various back end support utilities and tools that will allow us to provide technical support tracking, easy solutions for customers, etc. Nobody wants to manually type in a bunch of SQL queries every time somebody says "I cant reset my password, what was my email address again?" Stuff like that.

Once we have those tools solid, I would say in about a week or so, we are going to finish up the third game in the Magic School district. Although people keep seeing that district and thinking hey its just a rip off of this, I know better, because its actually a rip off of this. I would prefer to use "inspired by" rather than saying rip off, but couching terminology is something I was never guilty of doing.



What is this game? Well its titled Potions 101 for now. It might get its name changed to match the mechanic in play but for now I like the title. Its a class at Magic School that has been over run by the wildlife that the students are supposed to be studying. One of our "npc" characters is named Chase and he is the young Wizard prodigy of Magic School. With his assistance you are tasked with vanquishing the magical animals and restoring order.

The music is done, I was going to be doing sound effects this week but with launch of our ad campaign coming up tomorrow, and my all day project of uninstalling windows Vista, I have been too busy. Side note: I uninstalled Vista. I got tired of basic tasks taking many times longer than normal, and general instability with every program.

The game itself is a standard match-3 mechanic taken up to a match4 mechanic, where one of the pieces must be one of the monsters. Ever played Dr. Mario? That's my inspiration here, but if you read below in another blog entry, one of the factors I need to work in to this game is that its multiplayer. Dr. Mario was a fun game, but there was a lot of things I didn't like, and thus as with everything else I solve the problem by making something new and improved.

I don't want to bore you with the details, especially when playing the game will be more fun if its a surprise, so I'll skip to the end and give you some more eye candy. Here are the concept sketches for our little monsters that you must eliminate. I am also including the concept art for the puzzle pieces. In the case of this game they are spells, or spell components, that when grouped up release an effect that vanquishes the monster of their same color.

Sorry if this blog is wandering today, I had a late night with my friend Jim Beam.