Creating the game on your eyes - part 1: Idea, vision, choice of setting, platform, distribution model, etc.

Introduction

This article is the first of a planned series of articles devoted to the development, design and formation of our game. I deliberately will not give the name of the project or give links to it, so that the post does not get into "I am promoted." Yes, in fact, there’s really nothing to do with PR, because the project is at the very beginning of the journey and we plan to go this way along with those who are interested in watching the true-indie cuisine.

This cycle is conceived as a kind of live dev-log game indie project. Here I plan to talk about everything that will occur on the way - from decisions on choosing the setting, game design and art to the technical realization of all this business.

About us and our goals

A year and a half ago, I already wrote on Habré about our game-devil startup. Then I talked about our attempts to enter gamedev through social networks. Attempts feilovyh. What has changed since then? It was after that article that we found an interesting offer and recently worked on a city builder for mobile platforms on Unity. Not to say that it was exactly what we dreamed about, and it was really not an indie at all, because in fact, we simply worked as part of another company. But this partnership helped us survive a difficult period in our lives. Now we continue to support this city builder, but still we wanted to return to something of our own, warm and lamp.
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So, with what we come to the current moment?

We had: our own office, two programmers, one artist, one technical artist (she is also an accountant, she is also a jack of all trades, who can help with documents, texts, etc.), some free time, a great zeal and desire to do something interesting and, of course, an idea .

As for the financial part of the event, the work on the city builder did not bring gold mountains. We have some income, but it is extremely unstable, so we cannot do 100% of our new project, but we still continue to survive and not give up.

On the game - from idea to concept.

Did you see the picture at the beginning of the post? Here, now I will try to explain it.

It all started with the fact that Nikita (@Dartius) came with the phrase "I came up with a fucking game." Frankly, from his first words it seemed to me that this was some kind of nonsense. But then, the more I thought about it - the more I liked the idea and the concept.

The bottom line is to make something like GameDev Story about an action hero of the 80s and 90s. Roughly, about “Rocky”. Make a game where you would be cut from victory to victory to the height of glory by building your unique hero. Spice it all up with humor and a bunch of movie references and other creations of those years. In general, play on nostalgia.

For example, I got a job delivering pizza - and met with the local analogue of ninja turtles.

And in general, the idea seemed rather original. You start in the garage and take part in street fights. You drink a raw egg cocktail in the morning and go to train.

You swing, buy new equipment, constantly encounter various quests-events, get a bunch of long-handed perks (+2 to long-range hits) or “racist” (+2 forces against blacks). Yes, hello, Fallout! And moving on to your dream of becoming the best ...

So, the target audience was selected people who in the 90s were taken from “Rocky”, watched “Ninja Turtles” and played their “Dandy”. That is, in fact - hardcore. After all, we are ourselves and it is easier for us to make a game that will be interesting to play by ourselves.

Next I will bring this picture. We need to decide on all the components and make sure that everything corresponds to each other.

Obviously, our audience will not play fritupleyku or another farm. The plot is important to her, the absence of micropayments is important, it is the very soulfulness that is important ... And of course, the challenge is important, the ability to win at the expense of your mind. Based on the choice of audience and distribution model (premium game), we chose the PC as the main platform. Yes, of course, premium and hardcore are on mobile phones, but there it is much more difficult with it, and the competition is much higher.

Moving on. Visual style. It is logical that aiming at such an audience and wanting to cause nostalgic feelings, we chose pixel art as our stylistics.

Here, to seed a little art:

references to "Rocky"

references to Ninja Turtles and Zangief fighter from Street Figther

So, let us once again introduce our potential player and check whether everything converges and whether such people exist:
* Young man 25-35 years old
* Looking “Rocky” and playing “Fighter Street”
* Interested in computer games and indie
* Plays on PC (Steam)
* Prefers premium model to fritupleya
* Loves pixel art.

It seems that so far everything is fine and converges. However, focusing on such an audience, we think that the game may be interesting to wider masses. After all, even references to nostalgia of the 80-90s are only a nice detail, but not a determining factor for the gameplay.

A little description of the game.

Probably, having read up to this point, you still have no idea how it will be played. Let me write a few words about the gameplay.
So, we have a hero who has some characteristics (strength, endurance, etc.), money and from the very beginning - a couple of perks a la Fallout. And then you start going to work, making money, swinging in your garage with improvised items, buying new inventory, getting tired, sleeping, eating, running to work again and training again.

And from time to time to participate in some battles. The martial artist (at least for now) seems to be zero-player-fighting. That is all you can do and set up - you will have to do before the fight. Give the installation on the degree of aggressiveness, preferred strokes, etc. And then just watch.

During this whole process, you constantly encounter some quests and events. Worked as a newspaper peddler and broke the window of the mafia? We'll have to work out the debt in the fights. Or met a strange man, telling about cooking soap and underground fighting. Or maybe they found out that his brother had died and acquired the opportunity at the crucial moment to recall the deceased relative and to draw out the almost lost battle.

Can't beat your opponent? Try to buy in advance information about his weak spots or, for example, poison his beloved hamster.

Just do not be surprised then about the acquired negative perks and cows falling on the head.

Technical implementation.

I think, here I will surprise nobody if I say that we will use Unity . There are a million reasons for that - here both have experience, and an excellent and flexible development environment, multiplatform (for a start, we are interested in Steam with its Window / Mac / Linux, and then it may come to mobile phones).

And besides, not so long ago we made a small game in a week for the competition for speed game maiden (which I also wrote on Habré), where we took first places in two nominations, for which we received two Unity Pro licenses from Wozik .

What else to say? 2D in unit is now built in, we will try it. GUI, unfortunately, so far there is no (true, they promise just about), so I will have to use NGUI.

Plans

We have been carrying our concept and game design details for quite a while. It's time to take up the implementation.

And here, by the way, he turned up the game from Kanobu. He was announced just yesterday and it will last a whole month. So this is a great excuse to get down to business. In a month we want to make a minimal playable version. Moreover, the artist has been working for more than a month and we already have a certain amount of art.

Also, we want to try to conduct this development in public. Keep your own dev log, post to Twitter some news, sketches, screenshots. Publish a series of articles on Habré - about game design, about Unity's nuances, and in general - about all the interesting things that we will meet on the way.
It is very important for us to hear your opinion and learn something from it that will allow us to make the game not only our own, but also your dream.

And lastly - another piece of art by the authorship of our irreplaceable artist:

As you can see, the hero hangs the posters from “Rocky” and “Bloody Sports” on the wall, eats flakes with Mr. T., and he also wring out on one hand and many such things.

PS: The topic was still transferred to “I am promoting”, so I’ll add a link: www.VHStory.com

All articles in the series:

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/210534/

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